Oldest iron artefacts made from meteorite
Print Edition
The earliest iron artefacts ever found — funeral beads strung around bodies in a 5,000-year-old Egyptian cemetery — were made from a meteorite, according to archaeologists.
The team tested beads discovered by British archaeologists in the Lower Egypt village of el-Gerzeh in 1911.
The nine small beads come from two burial sites dated to around 3200 BC, found in necklaces along with lapis lazuli, agate and gold.
They are stored at the University College London (UCL) Petrie Museum.
Meteorite iron is an alloy that has a different composition to terrestrial iron.
The scientists teased out a signature of the elements in the beads through a test called prompt-gamma neutron activation analysis, under which a sample is bathed in beams of neutrons.
Elements in the sample absorb some of the neutrons and emit gamma rays in response, the level of which provides the telltale.
The team found traces of nickel, phosphorus, cobalt and germanium that meant the source could only have been extraterrestrial.
X-ray scanners showed that the meteorite iron had been repeatedly heated and hammered to make the precious jewelry for the afterlife.
This shows that Egyptians were already advanced in the art in smithing at that time, said the researchers.
Meteoritic iron is harder and more brittle than copper, the commonly-worked material of the time.
“They were rolled and hammered into shape,” said Thilo Rehren, a UCL professor of archaeology.
“This... shows quite an advanced understanding of how smiths worked this rather difficult material.”
The study is in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
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