… Recently it has been reported that the most ancient Egyptian iron artifacts, i.e., nine small beads, excavated from a tomb in Gerzeh (Egypt) and dated about 3200 BCE (Stevenson 2009), are made of meteoritic iron, carefully hammered into thin sheets (Johnson et al. 2013; Rehren et al. 2013). Our finding confirms that excavations of important burials, including that of King Tutankhamun, have uncovered pre‐Iron Age artifacts of meteoritic origin (Johnson et al. 2013).
As the only two valuable iron artifacts from ancient Egypt so far accurately analyzed are of meteoritic origin, we suggest that ancient Egyptian attributed great value to meteoritic iron for the production of fine ornamental or ceremonial objects up until the 14th C. BCE. Smelting of iron, if any, has likely produced low‐quality iron to be forged into precious objects. In this context, the high manufacturing quality of Tutankhamun’s dagger blade is evidence of early successful iron smithing in the 14th C. BCE. Indeed, only further in situ, nondestructive compositional analysis of other time‐constrained ancient iron artifacts present in world collections, which include the other iron objects discovered in Tutankhamun’s tomb, will provide significant insights into the use of meteoritic iron and into the reconstruction of the evolution of the metal working technologies in the Mediterranean.
Finally, our finding provides important insight into the use of the term “iron”, quoted in relationship with the sky in Mesopotamian, Hittite, and Egyptian ancient texts (Bjorkman 1973; Waldbaum 1999): beside the hieroglyphic “image,” which already existed before the XIX dynasty with a broad meaning (as “mineral, metal, iron”) (Erman and Grapow 1982; Hannig 2003, 2006), a new composite term “image,” literally translated as “iron of the sky,” came into use in the 19th dynasty (13th C. BCE) to describe all types of iron (Bell and Alpher 1969; Erman and Grapow 1982). In the same period, we can note a text at Karnak probably describing a meteorite3 (Kitchen 1975). The introduction of the new composite term suggests that the ancient Egyptians, in the wake of other ancient people of the Mediterranean area, were aware that these rare chunks of iron fell from the sky already in the 13th C. BCE, anticipating Western culture by more than two millennia.