Il Cairo – An international research team (Politecnico di Milano, Università di Pisa, Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Italian National Research Council, University of Fayoum, Politecnico di Torino, XGLab Italian company) documents the meteoritic origin of the iron of the dagger blade belonging to the ancient Egyptian King Tutankhamun (14th C B.C.E). This solves a longstanding heated debate among scholars since its discovery in the wrapping of the king’s mummy in 1925, by archaeologist Howard Carter. As reported in a paper published in Meteoritics and Planetary Science, geochemical analysis performed in December 2014 through non-invasive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry reveals that the iron dagger blade, today on display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, contains nickel (10 wt%) and cobalt (0.6 wt%) in concentrations characteristically observed in iron meteorites. (9colonne)
