Meteoritic iron: uses in research

Also: iron meteorites, iron-nickel alloy, Tutankhamun's dagger, Gerzeh beads

Long before people learned to smelt iron from ore, the only metallic iron on Earth came from iron meteorites, a natural iron-nickel alloy. Measuring the nickel and cobalt in ancient iron objects lets researchers tell whether the metal fell from space.

Known properties: Meteoritic iron

Only what the cited papers report.

Meteoritic iron could be identified in the Gerzeh beads by neutron and X-ray methods even though the iron metal had completely corroded. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2013.06.002

Key measured values

Values as stated in the cited paper's abstract.

Property	Value	Source
Nickel in Tutankhamun's dagger blade	10.8 wt%	Comelli 2016
Cobalt in Tutankhamun's dagger blade	0.58 wt%	Comelli 2016

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Timeline

2013 5,000-year-old meteoritic iron beads
2016 Tutankhamun's dagger blade came from space

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archaeology

lab archaeology 2013

5,000-year-old meteoritic iron beads

Rehren and colleagues showed that nine small iron beads from two burials at Gerzeh, northern Egypt, dated to about 3200 BC and the earliest known iron artefacts, were made by hammering meteoritic iron into thin sheets and rolling them into tubes. Strung with gold, lapis lazuli and carnelian, they show meteoritic iron was treated as a precious material.

As reported in: Rehren, Belgya, Jambon et al. (2013). 5,000 years old Egyptian iron beads made from hammered meteoritic iron. Journal of Archaeological Science. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2013.06.002

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lab archaeology 2016

Tutankhamun's dagger blade came from space

Comelli and colleagues measured the iron blade of a dagger from the tomb of Tutankhamun (14th century BCE) with portable X-ray fluorescence and found about 10.8% nickel and 0.58% cobalt, a composition that strongly supports a meteoritic origin.

As reported in: Comelli, D'orazio, Folco et al. (2016). The meteoritic origin of Tutankhamun's iron dagger blade. Meteoritics & Planetary Science. doi:10.1111/maps.12664

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