Daggers From Space!

In fantasy and sci-fi movies, artifacts from space often hold special powers or give people special abilities. While there is no evidence that the dagger mentioned in this post gave King Tutankhamun, it does sound like a story straight from the movies.

“King Tut's Dagger was Made from a Meteorite”, published by CNN, explores the origin of the stones and metals that made up a dagger buried alongside King Tutankhamen of Egypt. Using a method known as X-ray fluorescence spectrometry, Italian and Egyptian researchers were able to identify traces of iron, nickel, and cobalt, which matched meteoric compositions in a global database.

This article was very interesting, however as someone who appreciates the wow factor of discovers like this while also demanding of extensive details behind said discoveries, I felt that the article presented information of the find in a mostly well-condensed manor but lost itself in the wow factor and failed to delve deeply into the methodology behind the identification of the blade material or the implications of the find.

The discovery, if confirmed completely (the article concludes the description of the analysis by mentioning that the results of the x-ray fluorescence “strongly suggests its meteorite origin”), speaks volumes about ancient Egyptian hierarchical structures. 

Reserving the materials found in these meteorites for construction of daggers meant for royalty highlights how truly powerful rulers like King Tutankhamun were and how sacredly they were viewed. 

The article also mentions that a relatively recent hieroglyph in Egyptian history translates to “iron of the sky” and now, with this find, indicates that the Egyptians new exactly what they had. This furthers the aforementioned concept for, of course, the sacred and god-like king deserved the “iron of the sky.” Moreover, The ability to identify, locate, analyze, and manipulate the meteorites themselves suggests an advanced intellectualism as well as an advanced crafting ability within Ancient Egyptian society. The notion that ancient Egyptians in the 13th century B.C. were able to refine meteorite into daggers also provides cultural context to the situation. For no Western culture would interact with meteorites in a similar fashion for two more millennia.