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Tutankhamun and meteoritic iron - Part 1 of 2
James Tobin schrieb:
> I think it may be too bold to say that the Egyptians did not know how
> to work iron. I might agree that smelting it from ore was not known.
> If they had it I think they used it, having iron in metallic form was
> the trick, and Carter said nothing about the implements being of
> meteoritic origin, a question I have always wanted an answer to.
> Perhaps someone else has the answer for these specific artifacts if
> they are from meteorite iron.
Hello Jeanne, Jim, and List,
Thank you Jim. Of course, you are right; the Egyptians did in fact know
how to work iron though they did not know how to smelt it from iron ore
(of which there was plenty in the Eastern Desert according to Howard
Carter).
Now here is part 1 of what I found in Burke's "Cosmic Debris":
BURKE J.G. (1986) Cosmic Debris, Meteorites in History, pp. 229-231:
Uses of Meteorites
Archaeologists have found objects determined or thought to have been
fashioned from meteoritic iron in less than a dozen Near Eastern
localities that date from before the first millenium B.C. (Table 4).
This is not surprising because iron implements, if unprotected, would in
the interim have corroded into a pile of rust. It is difficult, in fact,
for archaeologists to identify with certainty the intended use or
function of many of the objects listed in table 4, because of the degree
of corrosion they have undergone. It is unfortunate, however, that
experienced meteorite scientists have carefully examined and analyzed
relatively few of these objects. For example, there has been no
published analysis of any of the eighteen items found in the tomb of
Tutankhamen which are presumed to be meteoritic iron, although these
appear to be in good condition. Nor does anyone seem to have examined
critically the alleged 20-lb meteorite fragment found in Crete at Hagia
Triada. Those archaeologists who are interested in meteoritic iron
objects agree that some analyses have been less than satisfactory and
that a number of other pieces have not been analyzed at all.
In 1884 Andrée cited an Egyptologist, Franz von Lauth, as proposing that
the first iron that was worked into tools by the Egyptians was of
meteoritic origin. By association to the Coptic word banipe (ferrum), in
which the first component is the old Egyptian ba, von Lauth in 1868
tried to demonstrate that ba meant "iron." Further, Andrée wrote, von
Lauth found the word ba with the supplement ne-pe, meaning "of heaven,"
and from this combination, ba ne-pe, concluded that it referred to
"metal of heaven," or meteoritic iron. Andrée did not quarrel with von
Lauth's etymological analysis, but he did object to what he considered
was an unwarranted extension from the fact that primitive societies had
used meteoritic iron to the assumption that its use resulted in the
development of iron metallurgy. Other peoples, such as the Greenland
Eskimos visited by Ross and Sabine, Andrée insisted, had fashioned
meteoritic iron into tools without thereby having been led to the
smelting of iron. Von Lauth, of course, had not found or seen any
meteoritic iron artifacts; his hypothesis was based on his studies of
the meaning and origin of certain words. Nevertheless, the idea
attracted some metallurgists, as a means of explaining the transition
from copper and bronze to iron metallurgy in the Near East, a phenomenon
that archaeologists were just beginning to explore in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Best wishes,
Bernd
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