Scientists have revealed that a dagger found by the side of King Tutankhamun in his tomb is actually fashioned from meteorite! I guess that’s just how the boy killed rolled!
The blade was discovered buried with the King when Howard Carter opened the tomb in 1922. It is now on display at Cairo Museum and is in impeccable condition.
Space.com wrote:
Made of non-rusted, homogeneous metal, the finely manufactured blade features a decorated gold handle. It is completed by a gold sheath garnished with a floral lily motif on one side and with a feathers pattern on the other side, terminating with a jackal’s head.
Now dramatic technological improvements have allowed the researchers to determine the composition of the blade.
“Meteoric iron is clearly indicated by the presence of a high percentages of nickel,” main author Daniela Comelli, at the department of Physics of Milan Polytechnic, told Discovery News.
Indeed, iron meteorites are mostly made of iron and nickel, with minor quantities of cobalt, phosphorus , sulfur and carbon.
While artifacts produced with iron ore quarrying display 4 percent of nickel at most, the iron blade of King Tut’s dagger was found to contain nearly 11 percent of nickel.
Further confirmation of the blade’s meteoric origin came from cobalt traces.
“The nickel and cobalt ratio in the dagger blade is consistent with that of iron meteorites that have preserved the primitive chondritic ratio during planetary differentiation in the early solar system,” Comelli said.
Read more here.
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