Scientists claim to have cracked an ancient mystery surrounding a dagger that belonged to King Tutankhamun over 3,400 years ago, saying that materials used to create the weapon may have come from outer space.
The mysterious artifact was first discovered in 1925, just three years after the discovery of the Egyptian pharaoh's largely intact tomb in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor in 1922, according to History.
A team of archeologists entered the tomb and found the weapon strapped to the right thigh of the mummified ruler, who died aged 19 from what experts believe to be sickle cell anemia.
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The dagger was found encased in a gold sheath decorated with a pattern of lilies, feathers and a jackal’s head, alongside another separate gold blade that was found under King Tut’s wrapping on the abdomen.
Until recently, the dagger's origins and the way it was manufactured has been considered to be one of history’s greatest unsolved mysteries, as the blade appears to have been forged out of iron, using technology which would not have been discovered by the Egyptians until nearly 500 years after Tutankhamun’s death.
But in 2016, scientists determined that the chemical makeup of the 13-inch blade suggested it had been expertly crafted using materials from an iron meteorite that had crashed into Earth.
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And now, further analysis from a team at the Chiba Institute of Technology in Japan has revealed that the object was likely made outside of Egypt altogether, with experts believing it to have originated in Mitani, Anatolia.
Publishing their findings in the Meteoritics & Planetary Science journal earlier this month, researchers described how they performed an X-ray analysis of the dagger, which is currently housed in the Egyptian Museum of Cairo.
The results showed that its gold hilt appeared to have been crafted using an adhesive material known as lime plaster, which also wasn’t used in Egypt until much later but was employed by crafters in other parts of the world at the time.
The analysis indicated that the artifact was made using a low-temperature technique that researchers claim 'hints at its foreign origin, possibly from Mitanni, Anatolia'.
This claim would indeed line up with Ancient Egyptian records that state an iron dagger with a gold hilt was gifted from the king of Mitanni to Amenhotep III, the grandfather of Tutankhamen, which suggests that the Pharaoh likely inherited the dagger from his father after it was passed down through generations before being buried with it after passing away.
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Iron objects were rare and considered more valuable than gold during the Bronze Age, mostly seen as decorative objects due to the fact that Egyptians found iron difficult to work with as the metal required a very high heat to forge.
Tutankhamun, a pharaoh of the 18th Egyptian dynasty, ruled Egypt from 1332 to 1323 B.C, with experts believing that the boy was just nine years old when he took the reigns of the world’s most powerful empire.
Featured Image Credit: AlamyTopics: World News