(ORDO NEWS) — The tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun is located in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt and was found back in 1922. But even a hundred years after the discovery, it is full of mysteries that scientists solve.
When the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamen was excavated, scientists discovered many interesting artifacts. Among them is a wonderful iron dagger in a golden sheath. The problem was that the iron dagger was made when the Iron Age had not yet begun and people did not know how to use native iron.
Where does Tutankhamun’s dagger come from?
Although before the beginning of the Iron Age people did not know how to use native iron, they knew perfectly well what meteorites were. It should be understood that not all “heavenly stones” are stones. Some meteorites are iron and people have long learned to use them, forging various objects.
The fact that the dagger from the tomb of Tutankhamun was forged from such iron has long been suspected by scientists. In 2016, a study was confirmed to have a literal extraterrestrial origin for the weapon. Now scientists have learned even more about the artifact.
New about the dagger from the Valley of the Kings
Scientists from Japan and Egypt have conducted a thorough comprehensive study and found interesting things about the weapon, which is 3,400 years old. For example, as expected, a dagger is made up of iron, nickel, and manganese. Inclusions of zinc and chlorine were also found.
The most interesting thing is that micro-level studies have found stripes with interrupted cubic symmetry on the surface of the blade.
This phenomenon is called “Othmanstetten figures” or “Othmanstetten structures” after their discoverer. They are characteristic of iron-nickel meteorites and are found on other weapons forged from meteoric iron.
As for where the dagger was made, which was placed in the tomb of the pharaoh, written artifacts will help here. We are talking about the Amarna archive, written 3,400 years ago, that is, even before the birth of Tutankhamun.
The Archive says that the iron dagger was presented to Tutankhamen’s grandfather by the ruler of the country Khanigalbat (Mitanni), which was located on the territory of modern Syria. If we are talking about this dagger, then we can assume that the meteorite from which the weapon was forged fell precisely in Syria.
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