Nature:
Analysis of tube-shaped beads excavated from an ancient
Egyptian cemetery has revealed the presence of iron with a high
nickel content, which indicates the metal may have come from a
meteorite. In their study published in
Meteoritics and Planetary Science, Diane Johnson of
the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK, and colleagues
describe how they used scanning electron microscopy and
computed tomography to study one of the beads. Not only did
they find that the bead predates the development of iron
smelting in the area, but they also observed that the metal
displayed the distinctive crystalline structure known as a
Widmanstätten pattern, found only in iron meteorites. The
few iron artifacts that have been discovered have all come from
the graves of important people, such as the pharaoh
Tutankhamun, which suggests that the Egyptians recognized the
celestial origin of the material.
