Among his myriad tomb treasures, Tutankhamun’s dagger made of iron has long intrigued archaeologists and the public. The mysterious knife has an elaborate gold hilt and sheath. Clearly a treasure worthy of a king. But how did someone forge an iron weapon during the Bronze Age? Who did the work, and how did it get into Tutankhamun’s grave?
Solving the Puzzle of Tutankhamun’s dagger
This one object shows the layered way archaeologists find answers.
To begin with, the high nickel content of the dagger indicated the iron’s origins in a meteorite. Actually, the Egyptian inventory lists refer to some ceremonial iron objects as stars. The Egyptians did not have the refined ability to forge such iron from the sky. However, they valued it far more than gold. So the first step of the answer came from some science and some ancient written evidence.
Experimental Forging
Next, in the 1990’s a Japanese team experimented with forging blades from meteoric iron. They succeeded at temperatures below 950 degrees. In the process, they formed conclusions about some markers that such a blade would have. Now, they have analyzed King Tutankhamun’s blade and found it matches the markers they predicted. So now the answer continued with a combination of experimental archaeology and more advanced scientific analysis.
The King of Mittani’s Gift
But the iron metallurgy of the dagger is too advanced for the Egyptians. So where did it come from?
Now add in some more ancient written records. The Amarna letters are clay tablets found in the ruins of the ancient, short-lived Egyptian city of Amarna. One mentions a gift from the king of Mittani. This king gave an iron dagger because iron was so precious—a gift literally from the gods of the sky.
Mittani was a kingdom bordering on the Hittite Empire and later absorbed into the Hittite Empire. The metalworkers of Anatolia could forge iron much earlier than other peoples. They experimented at the forefront of this ancient craft. So, King Tut’s grandfather Amenhotep III received a fine gift between kings. When Tut died so young, someone believed he deserved to carry this ceremonial dagger with him in the afterlife. Such “star” knives are sometimes mentioned in the preparations of the dead to open the way into their afterlife.
The Slightly Less Mysterious King Tutankhamun’s Dagger
So we can reconstruct a great deal about the mysterious King Tutankhamun’s dagger. Little did Howard Carter know when he uncovered Pharaoh’s tomb in 1922. The real curse of King Tut’s tomb may be how many threads of information have to be threaded together to understand each object in the tomb.
To read the details of the recent research into the dagger, click through to Archaeology News Network, “Research Team Unravels How Dagger In Tutankhamun’s Tomb Was Forged.”
Here to read a post about the lost city of Amenhotep III, possibly the largest ancient Egyptian city, found while looking for Tut’s mortuary temple.