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King Tut’s Space Dagger
What do you get the boy king who has everything? A truly out-of-this-world accessory. Thanks to new technology, a team of international scientists determined that the iron used to make the blade of a dagger buried with Egyptian King Tutankhamen more than 3,000 years ago probably originated in space. Researchers used a high-tech X-ray device to analyze the makeup of the metal object; they were then able to link it to a meteorite that fell in Egypt before 1300 b.c. According to their findings, the composition of the blade “strongly suggests extraterrestrial origin.” The ancient Egyptians were notorious stargazers—their use and study of astronomy dates back to prehistoric times—so it’s fitting that they created a weapon for their pharaoh from a meteorite, which they called the “iron of the sky.”