King Tut knife made from meteorite

a reply to: JoshuaCox

Yes, a meteorite of the right composition, coal, bellows, hammer and anvil..you have what is needed

originally posted by: grey580
For anyone that's an Avatar cartoon fan. Not the James Cameron Avatar. And not the crappy Avatar the last airbender movie.

In the show Sokka had a sword made from a meteor. Man at Arms Reforged did a recreation of that sword using meteorite. Have a watch.

I've been wondering why swords are so exalted in movies when it is the last resort weapon. A bow/arrow is first, then spear, then if something has gone terribly wrong... sword. I guess a bow and arrow is not as marketable as cool for some reason. I'll take a quiver with a bow over a sword any day. A sword is like a pistol on modern battlefields... if you are using it, something bad has happened...

originally posted by: Drawsoho
Meteoric Iron, having spent all of time spinning through the Cosmos,
possibly molten at times when it encountered extreme heat, is so pure
that oxidation barely is visible after the eons.

Simply polishing the knife after forging it would require high technology.
When molten, iron will absorb oxygen creating slag so the processing and
firing of the piece would require an attention to detail that the ancient
peoples that made the thing would have to have exercised. Forming the
knife with cold working would probably not result in the same knife. If
it is true the ancients were mining and smelting metal as well as creating
megalithic construction, then they might have had the ovens needed to
reach the temperature to melt meteoric iron.

Notice the fine gold work on the handle, with a transparent haft that has
gold dots embedded in it.

a reply to: Wolfenz

Another thought ... although doesn't mean much
just a curiosity

if its Meteorite Metal ... that this AE Dagger is Made from...

what is the Isotope Signature ? from this Solar System or From Another ?

Meaning that ..

Every Planet & Most of the Asteroid Belt has a Isotope Signature Directly from Our Sun/Star

It all Depends what Methods were used ..
if its been Shaped from Cuts & Grinds I would Assume
it would Show up in Xrays ... I would Assume..

it is true the ancients were mining and smelting metal as well as creating megalithic construction, then they might have had the ovens needed to reach the temperature to melt meteoric iron.

well See what I posed a few Posts Back on this Thread about Primitive ( Prehistoric ) Eskimos
taking Meteorite metal and Making tools out of it .. well by Cold Forging that is ..

Cape York meteorite
en.wikipedia.org...

Before Iron, Greenland had a 'METEORITE Age': Prehistoric Eskimos mined giant space rocks to make tools and weapons

Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk... ons.html#ixzz4AZhmZi6f
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
www.dailymail.co.uk... ons.html

Right nice Gold work on the TUT Dagger Handle .. Fit for a King..

Well More News Info that interesting.. to me at least ...

King Tut’s Dagger Made of ‘Iron From the Sky,’ Researchers Say

Comparing the composition of the dagger with meteorites that landed within a radius of 1,250 miles, they found a close similarity with one that hit the seaport city of Marsa Matruh, 140 miles west of Alexandria, on the Mediterranean coast. That finding may help explain why, from the 13th century B.C., Egyptians started using a hieroglyph that translates as “iron from the sky,” the paper said.

www.nytimes.com...

140 miles west of Alexandria .. around Marsa Matruh ... interesting..


Anyhow ...

I Love this Movie Quote!! fits well with this Thread !!

Conan the Barbarian ( 1982 )

Conan's Father

( the Riddle of Steel Speech )

Conan's Father[edit] Fire and wind come from the sky, from the gods of the sky, but Crom is your god. Crom, and he lives in the earth. Once giants lived in the earth, Conan, and in the darkness of chaos they fooled Crom, and they took from him the enigma of steel. Crom was angered, and the earth shook, and fire and wind struck down these giants, and they threw their bodies into the waters. But in their rage, the gods forgot the secret of steel, and left it on the battlefield. We, who found it, are just men: not gods, not giants, just men. And the secret of steel has always carried with it a mystery. You must learn its riddle, Conan, you must learn its discipline. For no one, no one in this world can you trust. Not men, not women, not beasts... This you can trust. [points to his sword] Conan's father explaining to him the mystery of steel.

fire and wind struck down these giants, and they threw their bodies into the waters. But in their rage, the gods forgot the secret of steel, and left it on the battlefield. We, who found it, are just men: not gods, not giants, just men.

I guess Conan's Father is talking about The Meteorites eh?

I guess the Egyptians thought the same ..

originally posted by: Anaana

originally posted by: Byrd
Actually, they did --

Did they? Is that a conclusion that has been reached by recent scholarship? It could be an attempt by Egyptian craftsmen to imitate a Hittite blade, but seems more likely that, to be buried with such prestige, that it would be an actual Hittite blade given as tribute, something that we know from the correspondence of King Hattusilis III, that the Hittites were prone to do with their customers.

You make some excellent points, but people who know the subject better have said it's Egyptian made. That said, they undoubtedly traded or had as slaves or even as immigrants Hittites and others from around the Levant.

Yes, I know, hence my incredulity at you stating that the Egyptians were smelting iron and that it had become "quite common" in the Levant by that time.

My bad -- you are correct.

It wasn't a matter of them preferring to use imported iron but that they lacked the technology to work it into anything but basic tools, such as, the two chisel blades also found in Tutankhamun's tomb. The Hittites on the other hand did have the technology. Working iron is not the same as working bronze and copper, and no hop-skip-and a jump from one to the other, even with iron of meteoric origin, not to produce an object of such high standard and finish. The Egyptians may have made the hilt, and the gold dagger in imitation, but the iron one, you're going to have to convince me.

I'll still hold out for them making the dagger since they made other things from meteoric iron -- but you're right that it's not impossible that they made a handle for a tribute blade. However, the one argument against it being a tribute blade that I can think of is that the Egyptians wouldn't have known it was special metal, and any old iron would have sufficied.

So I think that the Egyptians must have found it or seen it fall or something.

The link that you provide refers to the dagger in the OP, if you have information regarding another iron dagger then I would love further information on that, whatever you've got, it is not an iron artefact that I am aware of, and I have dug very deep on the subject.

I confess to reading in haste and acknowledge your better research.

The ancients were aware of certain metal (iron/nickel) meteorites , and had legends of them "coming from the sky" The Chinese and Japanese forged them with heat and pounding into daggers. There had not yet been invented a furnace that could smelt them, but they indeed could be hammered into these shapes with the same heat that they used to melt copper/bronze.

a reply to: Anaana

I found an article by some of the researchers that you might enjoy. She lists areas for further research and areas to question at the end of her post, along with references.

originally posted by: charlyv
The ancients were aware of certain metal (iron/nickel) meteorites , and had legends of them "coming from the sky" The Chinese and Japanese forged them with heat and pounding into daggers. There had not yet been invented a furnace that could smelt them, but they indeed could be hammered into these shapes with the same heat that they used to melt copper/bronze.

There had not yet been invented a furnace that could smelt them, but they indeed could be hammered into these shapes with the same heat that they used to melt copper/bronze.

around 1:10 Mark LOL

www.youtube.com...


The Most Amazing Sword way ahead of its Time was the The Ulfberht ( The Most Advance Viking Sword )
with highest Grade.. that wasn't seen until a 1,000 years later .. and the Rumor has it, that the Steel was imported from the Middle East .. more likely from their Sea Going Travels ..

From : Extreme Tech : just a day ago

Interesting Points


Ancient dagger found with King Tut forged with meteoric iron
By Joel Hruska on June 3, 2016 at 4:38 pm
www.extremetech.com...


Interesting Points :

WOW is Extreme tech Spying on me LOL I just mentioned this .. LOL

There is, however, another source of iron on the Earth’s surface. Iron-nickel meteorites, which make up about 6% of all the meteors that survive re-entry, were worked by ancient peoples to create small items, tools, and ceremonial objects. The native Inuit of Greenland were known to have used fragments of the massive Cape York meteorite to create harpoons and tools, and objects made from meteoric iron using cold forging (stamping and hammering the metal) have distinctive visual characteristics, known as Widmanstätten patterns.

What King Tut’s dagger can tell us

Initial tests to determine if the dagger was made from meteoric iron seemed to indicate it wasn’t. More modern tests run on highly sensitive equipment have shown that the blade’s metallurgical makeup means a meteoric origin. The research team may have even found the source meteorite used to make the blade — its iron/nickel ratios are best reflected by a single known rock, named Kharga (named after the Kharga Oasis, which is located within both ancient and modern Egypt), and located (or relocated) in the year 2000.

Initial tests to determine if the dagger was made from meteoric iron seemed to indicate it wasn’t. ???

The Meteorite wasn't found until the year 2000...?

The craftsmanship and skill employed to make the blade imply that ironworking was already somewhat known to the ancient Egyptians. That’s significant, because the first iron working mentioned in surviving Egyptian records date to around 1000 BC.

not until 1000 Bc Iron working was mentioned ... ( Surviving record date )

Further tests would be needed to determine exactly how the dagger was forged and to shed additional light on ironworking in ancient Egypt. But this latest analysis and subsequent information in the historical record suggests that while the ancient Egyptians were capable of ironworking when King Tut ruled, they may not have become aware of meteoric iron and its capabilities until his reign.

to be Continued ...

originally posted by: Byrd
a reply to: Anaana

I found an article by some of the researchers that you might enjoy. She lists areas for further research and areas to question at the end of her post, along with references.

Thanks Byrd .. Ill be soon , checking this out..

originally posted by: Byrd
a reply to: Anaana

I found an article by some of the researchers that you might enjoy. She lists areas for further research and areas to question at the end of her post, along with references.

She also agrees with me that the dagger is stylistically different to other Egyptian knives.

However, what I feels she doesn't understand is how "labour intensive and wasteful" most ancient crafts were, relatively speaking. This particularly applies to iron working. By comparison to working irons derived and processed from ores, meteoric iron was a massive short cut...if you knew what you were doing, as the maker of that blade clearly did for it to it emerge from it's scabbard in the condition that it did. One possible thought I had, was that given you had a hammer of meteoric origin to work with, utilising the Gerzean methodology of flint working, using percussive strokes, you could, with a great deal of time and determination, work a blade to that quality.

That said, if I had a lab at my disposal, an analysis of the cutting edge should give an indication of the molecular structure, and the metals hardness/brittleness ratio, and therefore the level of expertise employed in it's production, as well as some indication of technique.

Given that "cone shaped" meteorites are attested to having been the focus of worship throughout the iron working regions at different times, I am torn between whether the one meteorite was passed around or whether it is one event that united the entire region in a shared experience,everyone getting an equal share of the sky-fall. Prior to the Iron Age proper, and we can probably include other regions, such as Greenland where meteoric iron was being exploited by the native population into recentish time, iron was regarded as being from the sky, and this belief was clearly exploited by those who had managed to extract iron from terrestrial ores. It has the clear ring of a marketing strategy to me. Given the magical properties that the Egyptians ascribed to iron, that indicates to me that the process of production remained magical, that is, hidden, from them.

originally posted by: Byrd
So I think that the Egyptians must have found it or seen it fall or something.

Looking at Sumeria as a comparison, and around the beginning of the First Dynasty of Susa (circa 1500 BC) there is mention of various forms of iron, including the different kinds of ochre (black KA.GIG, yellow KA.SIG and white KA.PAR) and iron ore alone (KA), as well as pyrites (BIL), etc. AN.BAR, "Heaven-" or "Star-metal" is only applied to processed ores and worked iron. Other than worked iron objects appearing in the record, from about 2000BC, there is again, much like with Egypt no evidence of iron smelting, the iron bearing ores, ochres and the like, are being similarly employed in glazing and ceramics but with a seeming ignorance that those were of the same material as "Star metal".

The largest hunk of free Iron on this planet, is the Hoba meteorite, in Namibia, South Africa.

At about 66 tons, it left no appreciable crater, and hit the Earth at terminal velocity. A farmer found it very near the surface in 1920 when plowing a field.

This meteorite fell ~80,000 years ago, and was most likely exposed on the surface for a long time before being covered up by sediments. It is said that the original meteor came into Earth's atmosphere at a severely shallow angle, and because of it's shape being rather flat, it skipped through the atmosphere, slowing it down enough that it lost all of it's cosmic velocity and plummeted to Earth in a terminal velocity free-fall. One can only imagine the fireball produced by this huge chunk of Iron, and it may have been many times it's original size when it entered the atmosphere, losing all of that mass due to ablation as the surface shed molten metal in it's fiery path.

Some scientists suggest that it may have been originally found thousands of years ago, and some of the material was hacked off and used by ancient peoples, we really do not know, as over the years since it was "found again", it lost about 6 tons of material from people taking samples for scientific research and general poaching. To prevent further vandalism it was declared as a National monument of Namibia and is well protected.

To date, nothing discovered that was made from meteoric Iron has been linked to it, however since unprotected smaller pieces of meteoric Iron can rust to nothing.. we will probably never know.

This is what it looked like , soon after it was discovered in 1927.



This is what it looks like today.



Sources: Interesting Facts
Geology.com

originally posted by: Anaana

originally posted by: Byrd
So I think that the Egyptians must have found it or seen it fall or something.

Looking at Sumeria as a comparison, and around the beginning of the First Dynasty of Susa (circa 1500 BC) there is mention of various forms of iron, including the different kinds of ochre (black KA.GIG, yellow KA.SIG and white KA.PAR) and iron ore alone (KA), as well as pyrites (BIL), etc. AN.BAR, "Heaven-" or "Star-metal" is only applied to processed ores and worked iron. Other than worked iron objects appearing in the record, from about 2000BC, there is again, much like with Egypt no evidence of iron smelting, the iron bearing ores, ochres and the like, are being similarly employed in glazing and ceramics but with a seeming ignorance that those were of the same material as "Star metal".

Same situation occurs in Egypt. I see references to iron based pigments there.

a reply to: charlyv

Fascinating stuff!

a reply to: Wolfenz

The earliest known production of steel are pieces of ironware excavated from an archaeological site in Anatolia (Kaman-Kalehoyuk) and are nearly 4,000 years old, dating from 1800 BC
The onset of the Iron Age in most parts of the world coincides with the first widespread use of the bloomery. While earlier examples of iron are found, their high nickel content indicates that this is meteoric iron. Other early samples of iron may have been produced by accidental introduction of iron ore in bronze smelting operations. Iron appears to have been smelted in the West as early as 3000 BC

The process through which the smiths learned to produce copper/tin bronzes is once again a mystery. The first such bronzes were probably a lucky accident from tin contamination of copper ores, but by 2000 BC, we know that tin was being mined on purpose for the production of bronze. This is amazing, given that tin is a semi-rare metal, and even a rich cassiterite ore only has 5% tin. Also, it takes special skills (or special instruments) to find it and to locate the richer lodes. But, whatever steps were taken to learn about tin, these were fully understood by 2000 BC.


so it appears that theres no record of when and how people learned levels of metallurgy, often by accident probably they understood, as a whole what they could do with their medium but its down to a happy coincidence of available raw materials and demand for a product that they ever made anything that reflected their skills or knowledge, smiths work and such was always regarded as an elemental art of the gods. i like to think if anyone found ore they saw fall from the sky , that they would put it back to the fire to see if it flew off again

a reply to: username74

If the cross-sectional microscopic analysis of the grain reveals
inclusions, e.g. silicon, it can reveal the origins of the rock, as
well as determining the method used to shape the knife.

I doubt we will ever get to see the close up photographs of
a polished section of it.

hey username74,

The process through which the smiths learned to produce copper/tin bronzes is once again a mystery. The first such bronzes were probably a lucky accident from tin contamination of copper ores, but by 2000 BC, we know that tin was being mined on purpose for the production of bronze. This is amazing, given that tin is a semi-rare metal, and even a rich cassiterite ore only has 5% tin. Also, it takes special skills (or special instruments) to find it and to locate the richer lodes. But, whatever steps were taken to learn about tin, these were fully understood by 2000BC

You might find this thread I did informative,

Tainted ores

a reply to: punkinworks10

ok thanks

Would love to have heard the UFO accounts inspired by meteors first hand.
The "spear of destiny" that the roman soldier finished off Jesus with was brittle, the tip broke off when it hit a rib.
That would be consistent for a brittle metallurgical makeup with a high silicon conten.

a reply to: Slichter

Well that's not true. The spear held up just fine when it death checked Jesus.

All the bible says on this is:

Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water

You are confusing part of the Holy Lance story.

In 615, Jerusalem and its relics were captured by the Persian forces of King Khosrau II (Chosroes II). According to the Chronicon Paschale, the point of the lance, which had been broken off, was given in the same year to Nicetas, who took it to Constantinople and deposited it in the church of Hagia Sophia, and later to the Church of the Virgin of the Pharos. This point of the lance, which was now set in an icon, was acquired by the Latin Emperor, Baldwin II of Constantinople, who later sold it to Louis IX of France. The point of the lance was then enshrined with the crown of thorns in the Sainte Chapelle in Paris. During the French Revolution these relics were removed to the Bibliothèque Nationale but the point subsequently disappeared.

The tip was intentionally broken off to turn into a little icon. Honestly, that probably isn't even the spear.