King Tut's edc made from meteorite

If only he could have paired them with that set of Cabot meteorite 1911s... Only $4.5mil, but you gets two of thems!
 
The Egyptians didn't switch over to mass produced iron weapons until about 600BC after they conquered parts of the Assyrian Empire, With that said, smelted iron made from ore would have been available at that time, at least as a "luxury" item, from places like the Hittite Empire, where they had been playing around with for at lest 500 years. Iron is tougher to smelt than copper and tin, so the "iron industry" didn't really take off in that part of the world until like 100-150 years after Tut died. Some theorize that the Bronze Age Collapse may have cut off tin supplies needed make bronze, so they had to figure out something else to use. But the Egyptians had been playing around with nickel iron meteorites including hammering them into decorative items and jewelry for at least 1800 years prior to old Tut. I suspect that they were still considered to have a lot of mojo even the New Kingdom. Metal sent down from the heavens by the gods and what have you.
 
Wouldn't be the first or the last time that we saw sharp, pointy jewelry for some very rich dude. What makes this one different than the gold dagger is that even though it was also part of the grave goods, you can see it being pretty "functional" for its time.
A.L. said:
Real status piece for sure, suitable for king!
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Would have been funny if they'd gone through all the trouble to get a meteorite and fashion it into a weapon, and then some knucklehead craftsman (or maybe Tut in a moment of bad taste) had it made into one of those Mtech knife/studded brass knuckles tactilol knives. Yeah, it's worth a fortune, but who cares?
 
jdm61 said:
The Egyptians didn't switch over to mass produced iron weapons until about 600BC after they conquered parts of the Assyrian Empire, With that said, smelted iron made from ore would have been available at that time, at least as a "luxury" item, from places like the Hittite Empire, where they had been playing around with for at lest 500 years. Iron is tougher to smelt than copper and tin, so the "iron industry" didn't really take off in that part of the world until like 100-150 years after Tut died. Some theorize that the Bronze Age Collapse may have cut off tin supplies needed make bronze, so they had to figure out something else to use. But the Egyptians had been playing around with nickel iron meteorites including hammering them into decorative items and jewelry for at least 1800 years prior to old Tut. I suspect that they were still considered to have a lot of mojo even the New Kingdom. Metal sent down from the heavens by the gods and what have you.
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I knew all of this too, you're not the only smart one ya know. Alright, I knew very little of that, & I enjoyed the education - thank you!

This brings the great art knife maker Buster to mind...his modern reproduction of the Tut Dagger is always on the short list of "Best knife ever made"....& while such a list is fundamentally flawed in its very conception, his Tut piece is beyond remarkable. Buster Warenski...I had to Google his last name.
 
Update: I tried to edit this post right after I realized there was an earlier one, but BF was experiencing technical difficulties and I was unable to. Luckily the General cop Marcinek was there to link me to the OP.
 
Protably a few over the couple of thousand years where meteorites were the primary and in some cases, the only source of workable iron!!!:eek: As I implied before, most civilizations had at least played with smiling iron by between 1500 and 1200BC, but it really didn't become THe material until that later period and in some places, bronze was still the metal of choice for a lot of applications for even longer if you had access to tin. IIRC, a lot of the parts for the crossbows and other "industrially produced" weapons from the era of Emperor Qin Shihuang Di and his terra-cotta army circa 220 BC were still made form cast bronze.
threefeathers said:
I wonder how many of the 'magic' swords in history were made from this heavenly ore.
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jdm61 said:
Protably a few over the couple of thousand years where meteorites were the primary and in some cases, the only source of workable iron!!!:eek: As I implied before, most civilizations had at least played with smiling iron by between 1500 and 1200BC, but it really didn't become THe material until that later period and in some places, bronze was still the metal of choice for a lot of applications for even longer if you had access to tin. IIRC, a lot of the parts for the crossbows and other "industrially produced" weapons from the era of Emperor Qin Shihuang Di and his terra-cotta army circa 220 BC were still made form cast bronze.
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Not quite true, the Qin army were armed with iron swords and spearheads. Don't know about their crossbows though.
 
For clarity's sake, the dagger being discussed herenwas one of many in Tut's tomb, and NOT the one with which we've all become familiar because of it's image reproduction. That dagger, the most familiar one known, has no out-of-this-world blade content.
 
Etna said:
Not quite true, the Qin army were armed with iron swords and spearheads. Don't know about their crossbows though.
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my understanding is that the crossbow trigger mechanisms and a lot of other "parts" of the solders gear were bronze. That make sense because even as late as the Qin period, it would have still been easier to cast stuff from bronze than iron. My understanding is that the Chinese were kind of late adopters of iron like the Egyptians.
 
jdm61 said:
my understanding is that the crossbow trigger mechanisms and a lot of other "parts" of the solders gear were bronze. That make sense because even as late as the Qin period, it would have still been easier to cast stuff from bronze than iron. My understanding is that the Chinese were kind of late adopters of iron like the Egyptians.
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I get the impression that you are very well read sir. :thumbup:
 
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