
King Tut's dagger blade made from meteorite, study confirms - benbreen
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/technology/king-tut-dagger-1.3610539
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theophrastus
The bronze age in that part of the world was around 3300 to 1200BC.
Tutankhamen ruled from 1332 to 1323. From that alone we might suppose why a
bit of proper iron was more valuable than gold. (the Hittite secret of iron
wasn't for another 275 years despite Mika Waltari's poignant novel "The
Egyptian" which had the Hittites flashing their iron about the court of King
Tut)

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xufi
Interesting I didnt know that at all. Your "proper iron was more valuable"
comment reminds me of about a little different period from a documentary that
I watched that talked about the time around 700BC where Umayyad empires used
silver coins while gold and copper coins were used in Egypt/Syria.

~~~
unimpressive
Not to mention that aluminum used to be more valuable than silver.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_monument#Aluminum_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_monument#Aluminum_apex)

~~~
xufi
Correct, I believe this was also what I read about how it being more valuable
allowed these ancient civilizations who had access to it, to have some more
monetary value to their coins and also showed their political influence (Ex: a
picture of their leader ) when they traded with other civilizations overseas

~~~
will_brown
>I read about how it being more valuable allowed these ancient civilizations
who had access to it, to have some more monetary value to their coins and also
showed their political influence (Ex: a picture of their leader )

Probably 1 of 3 reasons Gold was valuable at all to the ancients:

1\. Gold is the most malleable of all the metals, making it easy to coin in
extreme detail.

2\. Antimicrobial properties (probably known to the ancients).

3\. Oh look, its shiny!!! We are no less vain now, than then. Or perhaps no
less vain then, than now.

Edit: Sorry I think you were referencing aluminum.

~~~
yk
Gold was also the heaviest known element until the middle of the 19th century,
which means that all impurities swim at the top and so it is easy to purify
simply by melting it. Plus you can assay it by a touchstone. So there are a
lot properties that make Gold the best metal for coins.

~~~
ridgeguy
This only applies to impurities that don't dissolve in, or alloy with gold.
For example, silver and copper cannot be removed from gold simply by melting
because they form solution alloys that don't segregate in the molten state.
Some solution alloys of gold include crown gold (silver, copper, gold) and
white gold (palladium, nickel, gold).

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Cozumel
The Egyptians called iron the 'metal of heaven', 'ba-en-pet' because it came
from meteorites. This was back in the bronze age, they could work it but not
make it themselves yet. Meteorite iron is known to be magnetic as well so it's
possible this would have seemed 'magical' as well.

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sandworm101
I;m surprised nobody has mentioned the many other cultures that made tools out
of space iron, both before and long after the Egyptians.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_York_meteorite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_York_meteorite)

"For centuries, Inuit living near the meteorites used them as a source of
metal for tools and harpoons. The Inuit would work the metal using cold
forging—that is, by stamping and hammering it."

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dredmorbius
As others have mentioned, different metals and the propensity to work them
require differing amounts of knowledge. They also require _vastly_ different
amounts of _fuel_.

Egypt was fuel-starved. Its only arable region is along the banks of the Nile
river, a band at best a few kilometers wide, which _to this day_ remains the
population center of the country. Wood came either from up-river (rarely), or
from other points in the Mediterranean. I'm weak on the specifics, but the
ancient references to the Pines of Lebanon bear on this.

Meteoric iron is valuable because it is _molecularly pure iron_. It's
essentially supernova ash -- what's left after the final stages of stellar
fusion result in least-nuclear-potential atoms, iron and nickel. It's
molecularly pure because it hasn't _rusted_ \-- in space, no one can hear you
rust, either.

Iron on Earth is rusted in large part due to the early stages of biological
evolution in which _the great oxygenation event_ occurred, and with it _the
great rusting_ \-- oxidation of what was, at the time, pure molecular iron
lying on Earth's surface, with the now newly-available oxygen. Semlting is a
de-oxidation process.

Many of the great iron ore fields are also the result of _biological_ activity
-- early-stage microbial life using iron (I am not sure of how specifically)
in its own metabolic processes, and depositing large stratified bands of iron
as a result. _These ores are 1-3 billion years old._ As with other resources,
they're among those humans have been tearing through, literally, at an amazing
clip over the past 200 years.

Iron smelting prior to the age of _coal_ was performed using _charcoal_.
Charcoal kilns -- you can find pictures online -- are large beehive-shaped
stone structures which were stacked full of wood and lit afire. The wood was
_pyrolised_ but not _combusted_ , pushing out the impurities. This is close in
chemical properties to coal which is, in essence, wood subject to somewhat
longer pyrolisation processes, as well as geological formation.

And the modern switch from charcoal to coal (originally sea-coal,
opportunistically harvested chunks broken from open seams along the English
seashore) occurred as what had been a heavily-forested Britain was exhausting
its own renewable wood resource and turned instead to coal. An activity which
already by the late 1700s was recognised as unsustainable (John Williams, _A
Natural History of the Mineral Kingdom_ , 1789).

Discussed at greater length in William Stanley Jevons' _The Coal Question_ :

[https://archive.org/stream/coalquestioninqu00jevo#page/14/mo...](https://archive.org/stream/coalquestioninqu00jevo#page/14/mode/2up)

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tome
Is it quite normal to call him King "Tut"?

~~~
adrianratnapala
I have always thought -- without any evidence -- of it as an American Thing.
Like Farenheit temperatures.

As a kid I learned on TV about a pharaoh named Tutenkhamon, and at some point
became aware of some Egyptian named "King Tut", who must surely be the same
dude.

Though come to think of it, now that we have this interweb thingy, it's worth
checking...

~~~
mod
> The discoveries in the tomb were prominent news in the 1920s. Tutankhamen
> came to be called by a modern neologism, "King Tut". Ancient Egyptian
> references became common in popular culture, including Tin Pan Alley songs;
> the most popular of the latter was "Old King Tut" by Harry Von Tilzer from
> 1923, which was recorded by such prominent artists of the time as Jones &
> Hare and Sophie Tucker.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutankhamun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutankhamun)

~~~
roywiggins
The shortening certainly works better in newspaper headlines and song lyrics!

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peter303
People view old Egyptian culture as one homogeneous whole when in fact there
were major tech changes over the millennia. Some elements like the formal
writing did stay somewhat constant.

First, the dyration of dynasty was one and a half times longer than our time
back to Jesus. That is a long time! Maybe the Catholic Church starts to
approach with some factors staying constant during 2000 years and others
changing.

Second there were major tech upgrades at times icluding the adoption of the
wheel, the horse and iron weapons. Enemy armies discovered these first, beat
up Egyptians, who then eventually learned these new techs.

~~~
dominotw
>People view old Egyptian culture as one homogeneous whole when in fact there
were major tech changes over the millennia.

I think viewing them as homogenous has basis in the fact that their religion,
belief systems, social structures remained virtually unchanged for thousands
of years.

Ofcourse they built better boats, better tools, better tombs, better textiles,
better mummifications techniques; but underlying philosophy and religion was
virtually unchanged from old dynasty to Cleopatra.

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jeffdavis
How did the ancient Egyptians know it came from the sky?

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gus_massa
IANAA.

They probably see it. Let's make up a story without any proof that it's real:

In some place in the countryside, they see a light moving in the sky and a not
very far explosion. (The ones that see a nearby explosion are dead.) Imagine
something like the meteorite at Russia a few years ago. (From the videos it
looks like a nice show if it doesn't land on your head.)

The local governor/priest/whatever heard about it and send a crew to the site,
let's say 5-10 persons. They found some molten glass and a strange metal
stone, that is like bronze but has a weird color.

They share the story for generations, if you are lucky someone they wrote an
inform for the pharaoh. Everyone think they are nuts, but a they have this
weird stone.

Wait a few centuries, and repeat this a few times, and now you have a
collection of weird stones and/or the weapons/tools made with them, and they
share a similar story. So the story is not long so weird.

Anyway, the knife made with the stone is better than the usual knives, and it
has a nice story, so someone send it to the pharaoh.

~~~
seanp2k2
Or it's special because it literally came from the heavens (to them) so it
must be to make the weapons for the kings, possibly even sent by the gods for
just that purpose, especially if it happened to blow up some people the people
in power didn't like in the process of smashing into the ground.

All of that is pure speculation on my part, but it'd be really interesting to
find out how far off my guess is.

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joliya65
Check out the documentary Secrets of the Viking Sword. Goes into great depth
concerning the materials and methods used in creating the Ulfberht blades.
Don't remember meteorites being mentioned though. Maybe they simply didn't
mention it in this documentary.

~~~
HillaryBriss
apparently the Vikings got the steel for their swords from as far away as
Central Asia and India. and that steel was critical to the superior
performance of those blades.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_sword](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_sword)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucible_steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucible_steel)

~~~
aminok
The famed Ulfberht sword is believed to have used steel forged in northern
Iran, and transported through the Volga trade route (that followed the Volga
river into the Caspian sea):

[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/volga-
trade.html](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/volga-trade.html)

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yxlx
Aliens built the pyramids confirmed. Tutankhamon was a reptilian.

