Tutankhamun's iron dagger was meteoric

[Duncan Head]

http://www.space.com/33037-king-tut-blade-made-of-meteorite.html

And they even seem to have identified the meteorite.

[Patrick Waterson]

Bia, or heavenly (meteoric) iron, was the main source of Egyptian iron objects, particularly for use in ceremonial applications like the 'opening of the mouth' of the deceased.  A dagger made of bia would be an ostentatious gift and deserve a gold handle and even a gilded exterior.

Use of iron from the meteorite at Kharga suggests that Egypt's rule over Libya during the 18th Dynasty extended at least as far west as Mersa Matruh, and quite probably a good bit further.  18th Dynasty monarchs devote a lot of effort to smiting foes to the north and south but appear to need to expend no discernible effort westward.

Interesting snippet, Duncan: thanks.

[davidb]

I found it very interesting - I read the article on the CBC website:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/king-tut-dagger-1.3610539

[Duncan Head]

The Graun's got it this morning as well - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/01/dagger-king-tut-tomb-iron-meteorite-egypt-mummy

[Sharur]

A bit of an odd duck, as whether this particular dagger is or isn't made from meteoritic iron has swung back and forth over the years, as different people have carried out different analyses. The new findings (albeit based on just two analysed spots on the blade, but using an improved technique, so hopefully more reliable) seem reasonably convincing, certainly, although the arguments as to whether the ancient Egyptians really observed one or more iron meteorite falls, to account for their term "iron from the sky", bia-n-pt, remain entirely speculative, and are usually bia-s-ed () by entirely modern conceptions, given that the term applied to all forms of iron, not simply the meteoritic metal.

As to the identification of the source meteorite, actually this has not been made definitively. The Kharga, Egypt, type IVA fine octahedrite iron meteorite cited in the press items is in fact the only meteorite recovered and known to have been found within about 2000 km of the Red Sea which has both a nickel and a cobalt weight percentage within 10% of the values found from the sampled parts of the dagger blade. However, only 20 iron meteorites are known from this region anyway, plus this object was recovered apparently intact (i.e. unworked) and on the surface just in 2000 AD.

It's certainly possible the dagger could have been made from a chemically-related meteorite to Kharga  which has not been recovered (hardly surprising, if at least part of it was made into this blade), but its find-spot cannot be determined, and need not have been anywhere near Kharga. Plus, given such meteoritic material tends to stand out, especially in a desert landscape, it could easily have been brought quite some distance by its finder, or traded, before reaching its final destination. Statistically, iron meteorites account for barely 5% of all meteorites seen to fall, but about 55% of all meteorites found without having been seen to land, primarily because they are much more robust and resistant to earthly weathering than other meteorite types, and because they are obviously very different to most local rocks in terms of weight, and often appearance.

So, a lump of largely pure nickel-iron sitting on the surface inviting attention from all who pass it isn't enough to have it considered a gift from the heavenly deities any more, apparently 

[Patrick Waterson]

... the arguments as to whether the ancient Egyptians really observed one or more iron meteorite falls, to account for their term "iron from the sky", bia-n-pt, remain entirely speculative, and are usually bia-s-ed () by entirely modern conceptions, given that the term applied to all forms of iron, not simply the meteoritic metal.

Given the general scarcity of iron in Egypt (i.e. no known sources except meteorites) from quite early times, one would expect them initially to name the metal for its origin and subsequently to retain the designation even when terrestrial sources became available because it was essentially the same substance (cf. Hebrew use of nechosheth for copper and subsequently bronze, the latter being fundamentally copper with additives).

It's certainly possible the dagger could have been made from a chemically-related meteorite to Kharga  which has not been recovered (hardly surprising, if at least part of it was made into this blade), but its find-spot cannot be determined, and need not have been anywhere near Kharga. Plus, given such meteoritic material tends to stand out, especially in a desert landscape, it could easily have been brought quite some distance by its finder, or traded, before reaching its final destination.

A valid point; there is an academic tendency to think that the world as it is at present has remained untouched for the past x thousand years and to match analyses accordingly.  Factoring in likely interim human activity adds a dash of realism to the situation.

[Sharur]

... the arguments as to whether the ancient Egyptians really observed one or more iron meteorite falls, to account for their term "iron from the sky", bia-n-pt, remain entirely speculative, and are usually bia-s-ed () by entirely modern conceptions, given that the term applied to all forms of iron, not simply the meteoritic metal.

Given the general scarcity of iron in Egypt (i.e. no known sources except meteorites) from quite early times, one would expect them initially to name the metal for its origin and subsequently to retain the designation even when terrestrial sources became available because it was essentially the same substance (cf. Hebrew use of nechosheth for copper and subsequently bronze, the latter being fundamentally copper with additives).

The problem isn't so much a semantic one, as a physical one, in that unless you're standing very close to where a meteorite actually lands, you'd be hard pressed to know whether it had indeed fallen from the sky. The classic movie concept of people watching a meteor blazing across the heavens and crashing into the next valley over, just doesn't happen. Well it might, but the physics involved mean the witnesses likely wouldn't survive the resultant blast wave (minimum arrival speed for a meteor to be still emitting light in the lower atmosphere would be of order 5-10 km/sec, and could be up to a maximum of c.70 km/sec for a solar-system object in near-Earth space, plus the object would need to be large and robust to have survived so deep in the atmosphere yet still be aglow, thus could be of order a tonne or more). I've made a particular study of objects supposedly fallen from the sky from ancient times forwards, and they can be anything from fungus through carved wooden idols to genuine meteorites, so the belief in things falling from the sky exists regardless of whether the object could actually have done so or not!

[Swampster]

Isn't that more or less what happened with the Chelyabinsk meteorite in 2013? The main part of the meteorite which was recovered was about 2/3 the mass of the Kharga meteorite.

[Patrick Waterson]

Indeed; as Wikipedia notes:

"The visible phenomenon due to the passage of an asteroid or meteoroid through the atmosphere is called a meteor. If the object reaches the ground, then it is called a meteorite. During the Chelyabinsk meteoroid's traversal, there was a bright object trailing smoke, then an air burst (explosion) that caused a powerful blast wave, the cause of the damage to thousands of buildings in Chelyabinsk and its neighbouring towns. The fragments entered dark flight (without the emission of light) and created a strewn field of numerous meteorites on the snow-covered ground (officially named Chelyabinsk meteorites).

The last time a similar phenomenon was observed in the Chelyabinsk region was the Kunashak meteor shower of 1949, after which scientists recovered about 20 meteorites weighing over 200 kg in total. The Chelyabinsk meteor is thought to be the biggest natural space object to enter Earth's atmosphere since the 1908 Tunguska event, and the only one confirmed to have resulted in a large number of injuries, although a small number of panic-related injuries occurred during the Great Madrid Meteor Event of 10 February 1896."

One might hypothesise that meteoric iron would be obtained mainly from meteors which broke up after descent rather than from meteors which did not: it is easier to locate, and much easier to transport, a field of handy-sized chunks than it is to find and work a self-buried bolide.

[Sharur]

The snag with cherry-picking Chelyabinsk is this is an exception, not the rule. (And as with Kunashak, Chelyabinsk was a stony meteorite fall, not an iron, of course.) In about 35 years of analysing bright meteor sightings made from the British Isles, I dealt with dozens of claims of "meteorites found" after a bright meteor was seen near the horizon (and sometimes not so near), none of which turned out on examination to have been anything more than terrestrial stones, iron slag or other terrestrial metallic substances. The only genuine meteorite seen to fall (technically actually heard, rather than seen, as it fell into some bushes!) in that time was in 1991 at Glatton, Cambridgeshire (another stone), which landed very near its finder in daytime, and for which no meteor was reported from anywhere in the country which could be linked to the event.

Luckily, even the final meteoric part of the Chelyabinsk event had ceased glowing by around 14 km above the surface, so caused much less damage than a genuine near-orbital-velocity surface impact (i.e. meteor still brightly aglow) would have done.

In terms of the reuse of meteoritic iron after arrival, it's clear from surviving meteorites and text descriptions that different methods were tried in different places to obtain pieces of the metal from often very large objects, notably by hammering and heating-cooling, and that the level of success could be extremely variable, dependent on the nature of the body involved. If the object had fragmented into smaller pieces on the way in, that would certainly have made reusing the iron much easier, if obviously harder to confirm now! There's also evidence that similar methods were used where telluric iron (non-meteoritic) was available on the surface as well.

It's likely that the easiest meteorites to work would have been the pallasites, stony-irons in which large olivine crystals are separated by narrower channels of nickel-iron (almost like a foam in 3D), and there is some archaeological evidence for this in the recovery of numbers of meteoritic iron worked artifacts from Hopewell culture (c.500 BC to c.500 AD) burial mounds in Ohio, while the originating pallasite meteorite source for these was likely that found at Brenham, Kansas.

[Patrick Waterson]

I would suggest that Ancient Egypt had on the whole terrain and weather more suitable for a) observing, b) tracking and c) finding meteorites than has the UK.  It would only take one occurrence noted by a priest or influential noble for the idea of 'heavenly iron' to take root and people starting to get a general idea about what to look for.  That said, iron objects in ancient Egypt are rare, so meteor-finding was not an everyday event, and the workability of what was found may well have been variable.

We may remember that Egypt shows signs of having been an organised kingdom for quite some time even before the 'First Dynasty', and meteor-spotting would have been an activity spanning centuries, even millennia, not just a few decades.  And while there would have been no particular shortage of terrestrial stones, iron slag would have been absent and other 'terrestrial metallic substances' primarily limited to copper and its compounds, which would have been fairly distinguishable.

Hence I see no problem with the Ancient Egyptians realising the origin, or more accurately the means of arrival, of the iron which fell into their hands, or at least their land.

[Swampster]

The snag with cherry-picking Chelyabinsk is this is an exception, not the rule. (And as with Kunashak, Chelyabinsk was a stony meteorite fall, not an iron, of course.) In about 35 years of analysing bright meteor sightings made from the British Isles, I dealt with dozens of claims of "meteorites found" after a bright meteor was seen near the horizon (and sometimes not so near), none of which turned out on examination to have been anything more than terrestrial stones, iron slag or other terrestrial metallic substances. The only genuine meteorite seen to fall (technically actually heard, rather than seen, as it fell into some bushes!) in that time was in 1991 at Glatton, Cambridgeshire (another stone), which landed very near its finder in daytime, and for which no meteor was reported from anywhere in the country which could be linked to the event.

Luckily, even the final meteoric part of the Chelyabinsk event had ceased glowing by around 14 km above the surface, so caused much less damage than a genuine near-orbital-velocity surface impact (i.e. meteor still brightly aglow) would have done.

Does a glowing stone from the sky mean that it was still glowing when found? That really would mean that it was travelling incredibly fast and/or was very large.As you know, but others may not, the majority of falls glow brightly as the outer surface ablates. Once the velocity has decreased sufficiently, the object cools pretty rapidly. It falls at terminal velocity which obviously depends on various factors but may be a couple of hundred miles per hour rather than the tens of thousands at which it entered the atmosphere.
However, there are a good number of substantiated reports of a meteor being observed travelling through the sky - at which point it is glowing - and the subsequent meteorite(s) being found. That includes some confirmed examples from two or three hundred years ago.
The Meteoritical Society database has over a 1000 falls over the last 300 years. These have to be big enough for the meteorite to be found so are often of the 1kg size and can be substantially larger.
Iron falls are substantially rarer but there are still around 50 in the database in the last 200 or so years.

Two which I think are relevant are:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meteor/metbull.php?sea=%2A&sfor=names&ants=no&falls=yes&valids=&stype=contains&lrec=50&map=ge&browse=&country=All&srt=name&categ=All&mblist=All&rect=&phot=&snew=0&pnt=Normal%20table&code=423
This was a rocky meteorite, it's true, but it was discovered by nomad tribesmen in the desert after a fireball and sonic boom. A similar event in ancient Egypt could have occurred.

The other was an iron meteor which fell just outside the village of Hraschina in 1751.
The description at http://evols.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/handle/10524/35683/vol2-Hor-Ilim(LO).pdf#page=4 notes the 'just over the next hill' effect where observers believe that the impact site is relatively nearby. However, that does not mean that the association between holes in your field and a fireball which has just been observed wouldn't be made. The fragements were 'immediately' excavated by local farmers who obviously associated them with the fireball and detonations which they had experienced even though there would have been a slight lag - the objects having to fall the final part of their journey at a decidedly pedestrian pace. I found it interesting that even a 40 kg fragment produced a hole only 120cm deep in freshly ploughed soil.

Chelyabinsk was unusual in that it was so extensively filmed but in terms of meteors which produce detectable finds or a usable size it is not much of an exception.

[Sharur]

I would suggest that Ancient Egypt had on the whole terrain and weather more suitable for a) observing, b) tracking and c) finding meteorites than has the UK.

And a far tinier population, mostly concentrated along the river Nile (with its mists and fogs at times), so the conditions for meteor-spotting and meteorite finding would perhaps not be so dissimilar after all. Plus near-desert lowland weather conditions aren't always so ideal for nocturnal observing as some tourist websites might imply...

It would only take one occurrence noted by a priest or influential noble for the idea of 'heavenly iron' to take root and people starting to get a general idea about what to look for.

A more critical element though is you seem to be assuming in all this that finding a meteorite after only witnessing a meteor that may have dropped one to the surface (generously, we might estimate this at as many as 1 in 30,000 visual meteors) is a simple activity. Sadly, it very definitely is not!

A single observer cannot establish anything useful about exactly where a meteor appeared in the atmosphere without making assumptions. Modernly, such assumptions can at least be based on previous information as to where in the atmosphere meteors are more likely to occur (most easily-seen ones happen between roughly 90-120 km above the surface). Such data can be established by observing the same meteor simultaneously from two or more sites separated by at least 40 km from one another, where the meteor's path among the stars was recorded as precisely as possible from all places, and then computing a triangulated 3D path. Experiments with highly experienced visual observers show errors of 10-20 degrees in such positional observations are commonplace, which of course creates problems for establishing an atmospheric trajectory. Without an accurate trajectory, suggesting where a meteorite may have fallen after the meteor ceased to glow becomes increasingly impractical, given that its "dark flight" through the lower atmosphere will likely have had a ballistic path under gravity alone.

Essentially, this leaves us with the scenario of the object or objects recovered only because they landed close to the witnesses, regardless of any glowing meteor being seen, much as I suggested earlier. It's only been since triangulated photographic meteor recordings have been available, following the Second World War, that such observed meteorite recoveries have become easier and more practical to make, without someone nearby having seen where the object(s) actually arrived.

We may remember that Egypt shows signs of having been an organised kingdom for quite some time even before the 'First Dynasty', and meteor-spotting would have been an activity spanning centuries, even millennia, not just a few decades.  And while there would have been no particular shortage of terrestrial stones, iron slag would have been absent and other 'terrestrial metallic substances' primarily limited to copper and its compounds, which would have been fairly distinguishable.

Hence I see no problem with the Ancient Egyptians realising the origin, or more accurately the means of arrival, of the iron which fell into their hands, or at least their land.

If this were so, then where is the supporting evidence, Patrick? We know meteor observations were being carried out in ancient Mesopotamia, given the descriptions provided by cuneiform sources recording omens and omen-lore, such surviving texts beginning c.1200 BC. However, there seems nothing comparable from Egypt. Even the Mesopotamian sources show no evidence for any knowledge of meteor heights or atmospheric trajectories, while the evidence for their understanding of meteorites, most particularly iron meteorites, is highly ambiguous, and dependent on scholarly speculation based on modern knowledge, not what the Mesopotamians themselves knew or suspected. (Despite its date, J. K. Bjorkman's examination and discussion of the sources remains the most complete and useful on these topics for Mesopotamia particularly: "Meteors and Meteorites in the Ancient Near East", Meteoritics, 8, 1973, pp. 91-130.)

Your comments do though lead to a plausible alternative scenario, one which makes no claims for a scientific understanding of meteors and meteorites anciently, and in which the object found was almost certainly unrelated to the initial meteor. In this, an authority figure sees an unusually brilliant meteor, perceived in some fashion (maybe low in the sky, or perhaps just from its general location) as pointing towards a specific direction on the horizon. An expedition is sent "to find the fallen star which must have landed beyond the horizon" from this event. Working from modern meteorite fall statistical estimates (analyses suggest these have probably varied little for the last several hundred thousand years at least), each square kilometre of the surface should receive a meteorite fall of some kind (that is, weighing at least a few grammes) on average every 50,000 years or so. Consequently if the expedition wanders far enough, let's say charitably just a few hundred kilometres or so, and because dark-coloured meteorites are somewhat easier to spot in the paler deserts around Egypt, the group might chance upon a meteorite lying on the surface of a size and nature they could safely return with, which could be plausibly presented as the "fallen star". Meteorite find statistics suggest there's a 55% chance it would be an iron, rather than a stone. Here ignoring the possibility the "fallen star" recovered could have been merely another unusual object, of course, perhaps a simulacrum earthly rock or piece of wood, even a piece of telluric iron. Or they might obtain the same range of options from a trader along the way (the sceptical might say before they left, to guarantee a triumphal return...).

Does a glowing stone from the sky mean that it was still glowing when found?

No, that's not what I wrote in my Nov 15 posting.

That really would mean that it was travelling incredibly fast and/or was very large.

And yes, as that is what I said, again on Nov 15, where I was writing of hypervelocity impacts, in which the meteor is still glowing brightly on impact, the witnesses nearby surviving easily being a common error in movies.

Not really sure what your citing the link for the Aioun el Atrouss meteorite from the Meteoritical Society's database is supposed to demonstrate, Peter, as it isn't clear from that whether the tribesmen who found the meteorites also saw the associated bright meteor, and even if they did, whether they linked the two themselves, and found the meteorites as a result of it, or if the two events were only connected later by researchers. From many past examples, it's most likely the meteorites were recovered either because the people saw the objects physically land, or (given it was in 1974) because the tribesmen had been alerted to the likely fall zone by researchers who'd established a trajectory for the meteor, and were hunting the area for them.

The Hraschina (now in Croatia) fall of 1751 is of course rightly famous, because of the diagnostic patterning within one of the pair of iron meteorites recovered, which is present in many other iron meteorites. Its importance lies in the fact this patterning cannot be duplicated by current earthly techniques. Again though, I'm not sure why you've highlighted this instance, because the "just over the hill" reports were made from Szigetvar, 110 km east of where the fall actually occurred, which landing point was immediately east of Hraschina. (Incidentally, that PDF source reference, though not stated in the PDF, is V. F. Buchwald's classic Handbook of Iron Meteorites, University of California Press, 1975.) So once more, we have the meteor being seen from various places, but the meteorites discovered by people who actually saw and heard them land close-by, after the meteor had ceased glowing in the upper atmosphere. There are many similar instances in the meteorite literature, hence my earlier comments.

[Swampster]

I cited the Hraschina case because the finders may have been able to see a glowing something in the sky followed soon after by holes in their field.
Do we have specific ancient accounts of finding a glowing rock, or is it that they put two and two together - that the glowing thing in the sky was the same thing which had spoilt the neat furrows.

A link like this seems have been made with the stony Ensisheim meteorite. Its descent was observed and searches were made all over the place but its actual impact was apparently seen by a small boy who lead others to the site. The recovered meteorite was termed a burning stone, firestone or thunderstone, so they obviously linked the two events, even though the last part of the fall was not fiery and was probably pretty quiet (until the final thud).

The other thing which might be relevant is that the Emperor sent out a commission to find out what had happened. This is pretty much as your 'expedition to find the fallen star'. Even if a local had not seen the glow but had seen the meteorite, word could spread enough to reach the ears of whichever priest or whoever sent to find out what on Earth had happened.

There may have been many such expeditions and only a handful - or even just one - might have found the actual meteorite. But once the link was established, this provides the term to be used for any other finds which may be meteorites from many years previously.
However unlikely, when we have 2000 or more years to play with the odds look more favourable.

As for the fall in Mauritania, the 1976 paper describing it implies that the fall was observed and the fragments were recovered by tribesmen who were in the area. Details in this paper are ambiguous though, so how about the 2011 fall in Mauritania - one fragment landed seven _metres_ from where a group were camping. The eyewitness account makes the link between the sound, light and impact. They went looking for the object - it took a while since it seems to have bounced/rolled a further 20+ metres downhill. http://www.nmbe.ch/sites/default/files/uploads/buhl_etal_2014.pdf

There is also, again in Mauritania, the 2006 fall where there were impacts close enough to a nomad camp that they heard the impacts.  "In the early morning at about 06:00 AM they hurried to the direction of the impact sounds and found several remains of the meteorite that fell apart along the village." http://www.meteorite-recon.com/home/meteorite-documentaries/bassikounou-meteorites/p2

Go back another few years and there is another in Mauritania, in 2003, only about 60km form the 2011 fall. Again, fireball is connected by a group of nomads with a 'stone' which fell close to their tents.

There is a 2012 fireball and a few days later debris was collected by children. The impact was not observed, so not as useful a case. Even without that, there are 3 falls in one decade where impacts occur within a very short distance to a nomad camp and the observers make the link with bright lights and loud 'thunder'. Today, they take it to a geologist, or break it up as keepsakes or to sell as with the Ensisheim example. If it had happened in early Egypt, taking it to a priest would have been one of their options. If the priest was out on his search for the falling star, so much the easier.

If impacts like this can happen in 2003, 2006 and 2011 AD (in the 234th least populated country/territory in the world), then why not in 2011 BC?

[Patrick Waterson]

A more critical element though is you seem to be assuming in all this that finding a meteorite after only witnessing a meteor that may have dropped one to the surface (generously, we might estimate this at as many as 1 in 30,000 visual meteors) is a simple activity. Sadly, it very definitely is not!

I think the difficulties may be overestimated.  Back in 1803, members of the French Academy of Sciences managed to ascertain that a reported fall of meteorites at l'Aigle did indeed result in extraterrestrial stones on the ground.  A further meteoritic occurrence at Angers in 1822 was similarly successfully correlated.

We may remember that Egypt shows signs of having been an organised kingdom for quite some time even before the 'First Dynasty', and meteor-spotting would have been an activity spanning centuries, even millennia, not just a few decades.  And while there would have been no particular shortage of terrestrial stones, iron slag would have been absent and other 'terrestrial metallic substances' primarily limited to copper and its compounds, which would have been fairly distinguishable.

Hence I see no problem with the Ancient Egyptians realising the origin, or more accurately the means of arrival, of the iron which fell into their hands, or at least their land.

If this were so, then where is the supporting evidence, Patrick?

Egypt's tradition of 'heavenly iron' and surviving iron objects of meteoric composition.