Middle Earth Ranger Forum

That is very cool. I can imagine some craftsman or whatever saying. "O my sun-king must have this!"

Of course, you know Indonesian krises were sometimes made from meteoric metal.

Interesting. I wonder how/if they knew the significance of the metal they were using; most meteorites you find on the ground just look like black stones. It would take a huge leap of intuition to connect a shooting star with an unassuming black rock. If the meteorite used to make King Tut's dagger was found still-smoking in a crater, maybe, but that would be an event of unparalleled rarity. Still not impossible, given the breadth of Egypt's sphere of influence at the time.

If it was found locally, any ferrous rock would be exceptional since Egypt's geology is heavily characterized by limestone. Still an odd choice to make the king's dagger out of a random black rock rather than imported iron ore, but it's not impossible that it could have been used coincidentally.

A third option which really intrigues me is micrometeorites. I know that in Japan, tamahagane (the iron used to make swords) was collected as black sand from river beds. Many of these grains of black sand are actually microscopic meteorites. I don't know what proportion of tamahagane was of extraterrestrial origin, but I imagine the ratio of space sand to earth sand varies widely depending on the location of the river.

Given Egypt's aforementioned limestone geology, it's possible that a high percentage of black sand was of extraterrestrial origin. However, given the Nile's vast watershed, it's equally possible that earth sand was more common in the mix.

If I had to bet, I'd say option 3 (made of convenient, local iron from riverbeds which just coincidentally comes from space) is the most likely option. Without access to Nile sand and a mass spectrometer, I've got no way to test that hypothesis, though.

From what I understand, there have been more than a few finds of meteorites immediately after they fell.
Javanese kris blades were made from meteorite metal as well, but your point is well taken that we don't know whether they knew it came from the sky.

Wow, those observed falls are much more common than I would have guessed! Definitely makes it seem more likely that they knew it was extraterrestrial in origin.