King Tut’s dagger is made of meteor iron, study finds

Over 3,000 years ago King Tut was buried in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings with a dagger resting on his right thigh. As if this ancient story wasn’t fascinating enough, scientists have discovered that the blade of the dagger is made of iron from space.

Howard Carter, who uncovered King Tut’s tomb in 1922, described the artifact as “a highly ornamented gold dagger with a crystal knob.” Now, a team that includes researchers from Milan Polytechnic, Pisa University and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo have used non-invasive, portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry to conclude that a meteor provided most of the weapon’s material.

It also has a gold handle with a jackal’s head at the top, and a gold sheath garnished with a floral lily motif on one side and a feathered pattern on the other.

“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. Her study has been published in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science. 

“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,” she added.

Iron meteorites predominantly consist of iron and nickel, with minor quantities of cobalt, phosphorus , sulfur, and carbon. Iron ore quarrying generally produces artifacts with a maximum of 4 percent nickel, whereas the iron blade of King Tut’s dagger was found to contain nearly 11 percent of nickel.

Searching meteor sites

Ancient Egyptians are thought to have been well aware of the iron’s celestial origins, possibly valuing it highly because of a belief that it represented a divine message.

Examining where the particular meteor that provided the iron for non-rusted, homogeneous metal blade might have landed, the experts took into account the nickel and cobalt make up in the dagger.

“We took into consideration all meteorites found within an area of 2,000 km in radius centered in the Red Sea, and we ended up with 20 iron meteorites,” Comelli said.

“Only one, named Kharga, turned out to have nickel and cobalt contents which are possibly consistent with the composition of the blade,” she added.

The meteorite fragment was found in 2000 on a limestone plateau at Mersa Matruh, a seaport around 150 miles west of Alexandria and over 500 miles from the Valley of the Kings. The dagger is on currently display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

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Image credit: Danielia Comelli

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