King Tut’s Mysterious Black Dagger Was Truly out of This World

The pharaoh Tutankhamun’s (aka King Tut) tomb has been one of archelogy’s greatest treasure troves. Howard Carter and his team discovered the tomb nearly a century ago, but it's still revealing secrets. One of the most mysterious objects discovered inside the burial chamber was a black iron dagger encased within the young ruler’s linen burial wrappings. The placement of dagger right at the mummified Tutankhamun’s side, as well as its ornateness, were key indicators that it was among the pharaoh’s most prized possessions.

The thing is, 3,300 years ago smelted iron was almost unheard of in Egypt. That means that well-crafted, rust-free daggers from that era are rare, to say the least. Theories posited the blade’s origin was extraterrestrial—from meteorites, to be exact. Yet there was no conclusive evidence to back it up. Then a group of Egyptian and Italian scientists used a process known as “X-ray fluorescence spectrometry" to define the artifact’s metallurgy more definitively. The results of their scans confirmed that the blade’s material did indeed originate from the heavens.

The blade’s composition is a mix of nickel, iron and cobalt, which matches the building-blocks of meteorites found around northeastern Africa. This, along with the existence of far less complex but seemingly highly valued meteorite jewelry from the same time period indicates that Egyptians knew these rocks were not terrestrial, and valued them extraordinarily.

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