What was Tutankhamun's meteorite dagger?
It is an iron-bladed dagger found wrapped with the mummy of the Egyptian king Tutankhamun; a 2016 study showed that its blade is made of meteoritic iron, rich in nickel and cobalt.
When Howard Carter's team examined the mummy of Tutankhamun, the young pharaoh who died around 1323 BCE, they found two daggers among the wrappings. One had a gold blade; the other, more surprising, had a blade of iron that was still bright and almost rust-free. It was set in a gold handle with a rock crystal knob at the end, and came with a decorated gold sheath. At a time when iron was rarer than gold in Egypt, it was a treasure fit for a king.
For decades archaeologists wondered whether the iron came from a meteorite. In 2016 a team of Italian and Egyptian researchers analysed the blade using portable X-ray fluorescence, a technique that measures the elements in a surface without damaging it. They found about 11% nickel and a little cobalt, a combination typical of iron meteorites and quite unlike the iron people later smelted from ore. They concluded that the blade was almost certainly made from meteoritic iron, and noted that the composition fits that of known iron meteorites.
Later work, published in 2022, examined the blade's surface in more detail and found patterns consistent with the crystal structure of meteoritic metal. Those researchers suggested that the dagger had been forged at a relatively low temperature, and that it may have been a gift from a foreign ruler, since ancient letters from the period mention iron daggers sent to Egypt by the king of Mitanni. That idea is plausible but not proven.
Tutankhamun's tomb contained other small iron objects too, which may also be meteoritic. The dagger is on display in Egypt. It shows that ancient Egyptians prized "iron from the sky", and a later Egyptian word for iron is often translated in just that way.