A dagger buried with ancient Egyptian King Tutankhamen was made from a meteorite, researchers have revealed.
Using a high-tech X-ray device, Italian scientists have determined that the iron used to make the dagger is 11 percent nickel,
Discover magazine reported. The composition aligns with that of a known meteorite and is much different from Earthly iron, which is about 4 percent nickel. The dagger also contains cobalt, which is abundant in meteorites.
The dagger was discovered with the mummified body in 1925. Experts from Polytechnic University of Milan, the University of Pisa in Italy, and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo used portable x-ray fluorescence spectrometry to examine the dagger without touching it.
The dagger's composition resembled that of a meteorite that hit the city of Marsa Matruh on the Mediterranean coast,
The New York Times reported. It also could help explain an Egyptian hieroglyph that translates as “iron from the sky.”
The findings confirm the belief that other ancient Egyptian objects used in important rituals were also made with meteoric iron and suggests that the ancient Egyptians understood what they were working with.
"The introduction of the new composite term suggests that the ancient Egyptians, in the wake of other ancient people of the Mediterranean area, were aware that these rare chunks of iron fell from the sky already in the 13th C. BCE, anticipating Western culture by more than two millennia," the report reads.
The findings were
published May 20 in the journal Meteorics and Planetary Science.
Twitter users seemed impressed by the new discovery.
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