Tutankhamun's dagger was forged from a meteorite.
Its blade holds 11% nickel plus some cobalt, like iron meteorites, while iron smelted from earthly ores before the 19th century never tops 4% nickel.
The events
- Tutankhamun's meteoric iron daggerc. 1323 BC · Valley of the Kings, Egypt. Iron was a rarity in the Bronze Age, and the dagger from Tutankhamun's tomb was made from a meteorite: its blade holds 11% nickel and 0.6% cobalt. Iron smelted from terrestrial ores before the 19th century never contains more than 4% nickel.
- Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb1922 · Valley of the Kings, Luxor. On 4 November 1922 Howard Carter's workmen cleared a step leading to a sealed tomb in the Valley of the Kings. Three weeks later Carter peered in by candlelight and, asked by Lord Carnarvon whether he could see anything, replied: 'Yes, wonderful things.' The tomb held more than 5,000 objects, including a gold mask of about 10 kg. The find set off worldwide Egyptomania.
14th century BC · 20th century
More amazing facts
- 1370 BC We even know the season when the Egtved Girl was buried in Denmark: summer, 1370 BC. The tree rings of her oak coffin say so, and a yarrow flower had been laid on it.
- 1350 BC · 1963 In ancient Egypt a pregnancy test used grain: a woman urinated on wheat and barley, and if they sprouted, she was pregnant.
- 1323 BC · 1939 Tutankhamun's trumpets were silent for over 3,000 years, then played live on BBC radio in 1939 to some 150 million listeners.
- 1323 BC · 1200 BC A near-contemporary of Tutankhamun in China was an army general.
- 1305 BC · 1982 One of the richest Bronze Age shipwrecks was found by a sponge diver who sketched 'metal biscuits with ears'. They were copper ingots: ten tonnes of them on a 14th-century BC ship off Turkey, plus a gold scarab of Nefertiti.
- 1274 BC · 1945 Fifteen years after the Battle of Kadesh, Egypt and the Hittites signed one of the oldest known peace treaties.