Seems that good knives have been popular for a long time....

[hunter63]

Knife found in King Tut tomb........Made from Meteorite Steel with a high nickel content.

http://www.space.com/33037-king-tut-...adline+Feed%29

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[WalkingTree]

Meteorite steel. They must've thought of it as a knife from the gods.

[hunter63]

Meteorite steel. They must've thought of it as a knife from the gods.

That was kinda what the "experts" thought, as well.....

[canid]

I didn't know they used meteoritic iron. That's pretty cool.

[hunter63]

I didn't know they used iron.....I was thinking this was still in the bronze age tools era...but seem its close to the iron age.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutankhamun
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Age

As meteorites of mostly iron could be pretty pure.....seems they wouldn't of had to smelt ore......

So yeah pretty precious.......

[kyratshooter]

They keep moving the iron age back with new discoveries at archeology sites in the mid east. It's difficult for us old history teachers to keep up with the new discoveries.

Iron rusts and decomposes just like wood, so it can disappear from the record if an area was humid. Bronze and copper last longer, so there was iron use during what we call the copper and bronze ages but the iron turned into a pile of rust, so we always thought it was not there.

They have first meteor iron use back to nearly 4000bc, which predates the pyramids. They have also taken the discovery of iron smelting away from the Hittites in 1200bc and given it to the Syrians in 2000bc.

Thing about smelting iron is that you have to know how to do it before you can make it happen. It is not a process you stumble over accidentally. You do not just wake up one day and think, "I'm going to layer some crushed limestone and red dirt and charcoal and set fire to the pile inside a furnace and get it up to 2200 degrees and blow air through it for a couple of days, then tap off the bottom layer and get me some iron!"

Even small batches of iron are difficult to smelt and more complicated than any of the common metals of prehistory that simply required melting, fluxing and casting.

The real trick is that many of the meteors are not just iron, they are blasted, super heated and purified into steel, so knives of steel like Tut had are older than the knowledge of how to make simple iron.

As a side note, there is legend that the Bowie knife carried by James Bowie at the Alamo fight was forged from a meteor by an Arkansas blacksmith.

[hunter63]

....................
As a side note, there is legend that the Bowie knife carried by James Bowie at the Alamo fight was forged from a meteor by an Arkansas blacksmith.

Looked it up...still kinda a legend...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Black_(blacksmith)

[Faiaoga]

Neat and cool. Even a general interest news website has something about this, and it explains a little about the methodology. States the dagger is 34 cm (13.4 inches) long - I wonder if that is blade length or overall length.
www.slate.com Bad Astronomy by Phil Plait
"King Tut Had a Dagger That Fell From Space"

[kyratshooter]

deleted to preserve website harmony.

[Rick]

I think being a knife maker for a king would have been a great job.

King: "I want a knife made out of metal from heaven."
Knifemaker: (Gulp)

[hunter63]

TUT......"Yeah, and if your are really good at knife making, I gonna take you with me to the next world.....so I will always have a knife maker with me."

Knife maker, " (under breath.....Thanks a lot there, Tut.....)....
Out loud, "Just want to please you, my king!"...(ship)

[Faiaoga]

I wonder how long it will be before a cutlery company offers a replica King Tut Dagger

[Phaedrus]

I wonder how long it will be before a cutlery company offers a replica King Tut Dagger

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!

[NightSG]

You do not just wake up one day and think, "I'm going to layer some crushed limestone and red dirt and charcoal and set fire to the pile inside a furnace and get it up to 2200 degrees and blow air through it for a couple of days, then tap off the bottom layer and get me some iron!"

You don't?

[kyratshooter]

No, not if your most complicated machine is a simple lever and you have not yet come up with the concept of a wheel!

[Rick]

Actually, the wheel had been invented several times prior to metallurgy. Unfortunately, it kept rolling away and the inventors couldn't find them.

"Where the heck did I put that?" (scratching head)

[randyt]

maybe the knife showed up as is and was made elsewhere.

[hunter63]

Well, not sure how far along China was at the time......but:
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[randyt]

I have read not on the web lol, that modern Egyptians and Egyptians from the pharaohs time frame have no DNA connection.

[Rick]

A knife? Sure, it's simple. It's called metallurgy. Start with four types of metal. Here's the equation.

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