[HN Gopher] Study sheds new light on Tutankhamun's mysterious da...
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Study sheds new light on Tutankhamun's mysterious dagger 'born'
from meteorite
Author : belter
Score : 46 points
Date : 2022-03-12 18:55 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (english.elpais.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (english.elpais.com)
| termau wrote:
| jupp0r wrote:
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| [deleted]
| RobertMiller wrote:
| I've heard of this dagger before but I had no clue it was so
| large. 35.2 cm total length, 21.8 cm for just the blade. A little
| longer and it could almost be called a short sword. Very
| impressive for meteoric iron.
| shakna wrote:
| > Very impressive for meteoric iron.
|
| Is it? Pratchett's sword was hand-forged from meteoric iron,
| using fairly traditional methods and was "full-sized". (Though
| he used a combination of surface deposits and meteoric iron,
| and I'm not sure on the ratio.)
| narag wrote:
| Same length as my kitchen knife, just thinner. Is that unusual
| for a dagger?
| perihelions wrote:
| Very remarkable that there's a surviving ~3,770 year old written
| document mentioning a ~3,770 year old household object, and
| someone was able to match the two:
|
| - _" In the Amarna Letters, a diplomatic correspondence written
| on clay tablets and discovered in a royal archive in the south of
| Egypt, there is a list of gifts sent by King Tushratta of Mitanni
| in Anatolia, to Pharaoh Amenhotep III, Tutankhamun's grandfather
| of Ancient Egypt when he married Princess Tadukhipa, the daughter
| of Tushratta. Among the gifts mentioned in the list is a dagger
| with an iron-made blade. The research of Arai's team states that
| this is very likely to be the same dagger for two main
| reasons..."_
| widforss wrote:
| I do believe that the point here is that iron daggers were not
| commonplace 3770 years ago. Bronze daggers would have been. Not
| my area of expertize though.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| An iron dagger back then would be like a platinum dagger
| today.
| daenz wrote:
| Imagine the psychological power a weapon like that would hold
| over people at that time. Your leader possessing a dagger forged
| from light that fell from the heavens would probably inspire a
| lot of supernatural feelings.
| mannerheim wrote:
| Did they necessarily know that it was made from a meteorite?
| The dagger was a gift, and the Mitanni who made it might not
| have seen it land or made the connection; the meteorite could
| have already been there for some time before its iron was
| exploited.
| sebow wrote:
| I'm pretty sure even back then people were aware of celestial
| bodies like planets & stars. However meteorites, comets,
| things that came close to Earth's atmosphere were probably
| regarded differently depending on culture, social
| class/status(which vastly indicated level of education),etc.
| Also more likely than not those events were used politically
| to much success. I find it hard to believe that the
| 'brightest' people of any ancient period weren't aware that
| some of these 'small' objects might hit and thus remain on
| earth.
| mannerheim wrote:
| This is certainly true for some cases:
|
| > Meteorite falls may have been the source of cultish
| worship. The cult in the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one
| of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, possibly
| originated with the observation and recovery of a meteorite
| that was understood by contemporaries to have fallen to the
| earth from Jupiter, the principal Roman deity.[68] There
| are reports that a sacred stone was enshrined at the temple
| that may have been a meteorite.
|
| However, that doesn't mean that the particular knife of
| Tutankhamun was necessarily known by the Egyptians to have
| been made from meteoric iron.
| belter wrote:
| It seems could be one that landed 240km (150 miles) west of
| Alexandria.
|
| "Tutankhamun's knife was made from meteorite iron"
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36432635
| mannerheim wrote:
| The article from OP (which is from this year, rather than
| 2016 as the BBC article) says that they believe it came
| from the Mitanni, but that their conclusion isn't a
| definitive one:
|
| > The origin is another mystery around Tutankhamen's blade.
| In the Amarna Letters, a diplomatic correspondence written
| on clay tablets and discovered in a royal archive in the
| south of Egypt, there is a list of gifts sent by King
| Tushratta of Mitanni in Anatolia, to Pharaoh Amenhotep III,
| Tutankhamun's grandfather of Ancient Egypt when he married
| Princess Tadukhipa, the daughter of Tushratta. Among the
| gifts mentioned in the list is a dagger with an iron-made
| blade.
|
| > The research of Arai's team states that this is very
| likely to be the same dagger for two main reasons. The
| first being that iron-processing technology was already
| common practice at the time in the Mitanni regions. And
| second, because the dagger's gold hilt shows a low
| percentage of calcium with no sulfur. This feature
| indicates the use of lime plaster as an adhesive material
| for the decoration of this part of the object, a frequently
| used material in Mitanni, which was used in Egypt until
| several centuries later, during the Ptolemaic period.
|
| (I assume they meant 'which was [not] used in Egypt until
| several centuries later', otherwise that sentence doesn't
| quite make sense)
| jupp0r wrote:
| There are 44 tons of meteorites landing on earth every day,
| so just finding one that closely matches isn't more than a
| rough guess.
| blaeks wrote:
| I think that is the whole point - let us assume they did not
| know about the Widmanstatten patterns and s*iet we know now.
| What if they just enjoyed the beauty of that power from
| within;)
|
| Without "knowing". So the power is "accidental" - accidentally
| in Tut's hands.
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