Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick. And today on Stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: Your Mind, we wanted to kick off a series of
Speaker 3: episodes on tools, blades, weapons, artifacts, ceremonial ornaments, and various
Speaker 3: things things made by humans out of materials that came
Speaker 3: from outer space, particularly stuff made from meteorite iron.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, whether you've listened to our show before or not,
Speaker 2: you're probably familiar with the three age system of classifying
Speaker 2: ancient civilizations, defining them by their material and the technological
Speaker 2: level of advancement for that given civilization. And this is
Speaker 2: not without its complexity and even its controversy, as we'll
Speaker 2: get into, but it divides things into the Stone Age,
Speaker 2: the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. In this series
Speaker 2: of episodes from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we're going
Speaker 2: to be dealing predominantly with the Age of Bronze, typified
Speaker 2: by its bronze production and lasting very roughly. And these
Speaker 2: dates are not solid for all places and civilizations. A
Speaker 2: strong caveat there from somewhere around thirty three hundred to
Speaker 2: twelve hundred BCE, So we're dealing with a very amorphous
Speaker 2: period of time here, and the transference into the age
Speaker 2: of iron is much the same. But before we jump
Speaker 2: into the key example that we're going to be looking
Speaker 2: at in this episode, I just wanted to share a
Speaker 2: couple of quotes to perhaps help put this time frame
Speaker 2: in perspective and even cast a different light on civilization
Speaker 2: before the widespread production and use of iron. Both of
Speaker 2: these are from books that deal more specifically with Chinese
Speaker 2: technology and Chinese history, but I believe some of the
Speaker 2: takeaways from both of these quotes are just appliable across
Speaker 2: the board. So this first one is a quote from
Speaker 2: John Key in his book A History of China. He writes, quote, Indeed,
Speaker 2: bronze came to occupy much the same position in ancient
Speaker 2: China as stone. In the contemporary civilization of Egypt or
Speaker 2: later those of Iran, Persia and Greece. Enormous effort was
Speaker 2: devoted to producing bronzewear. Highly sophisticated ideas were expressed through it.
Speaker 2: Some of the earliest inscriptions were found on it, and
Speaker 2: its durability has ensured that plentiful examples have survived. And
Speaker 2: this other quote is from Joseph Needham, whose work we've
Speaker 2: discussed in the show before, from Science and Society in
Speaker 2: Ancient China quote, it looks as if the earliest kings
Speaker 2: or feudal princes recognized bronze metallurgy to be the basis
Speaker 2: of feudal power over the Neolithic peasantry because of the
Speaker 2: superior arms which it rendered possible, and therefore they appropriated
Speaker 2: that the technique of metalworking. So what I like about
Speaker 2: these two quotes is I think they helped drive home
Speaker 2: that bronze was not only a material for tools, but
Speaker 2: a material through which culture was made manifest, as well
Speaker 2: as a source of power, both in physical weaponry and
Speaker 2: even just as an idea. And while these examples, again
Speaker 2: are both from texts that focus exclusively on Chinese history,
Speaker 2: I think you can sort of get a broader take
Speaker 2: home from them, Like I said earlier, So on top
Speaker 2: of that, I would say, also, I think it's essential
Speaker 2: to keep in mind that the Bronze Age was far
Speaker 2: from just a period between or a precursor to something
Speaker 2: you know better or more advanced. It was a time
Speaker 2: of great technological and cultural advancement. It was the age
Speaker 2: of the wheel, of irrigation, of writing systems, enhanced weaponry,
Speaker 2: and much more. And it's not merely the time before iron.
Speaker 2: It is the time that gave birth to iron technology
Speaker 2: as well well.
Speaker 3: And I think that that can really be driven home
Speaker 3: in the fact that iron is not even necessarily for
Speaker 3: all uses a superior metal to bronze. Bronze could be
Speaker 3: considered materially superior in some ways. It's just that iron
Speaker 3: is once you have the technology to smelt it and
Speaker 3: then work it in the high temperatures you need, it
Speaker 3: is easier to produce at mass scales and cheaper.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there's definitely from what I've read, there's
Speaker 2: definitely a period of time in which your early smelted
Speaker 2: iron tools, weapons, what have you are not going to
Speaker 2: be as durable and as highly efficient as the high
Speaker 2: end bronze weapons and tools of that same time period.
Speaker 3: But you can make more of them, right right.
Speaker 2: But eventually, of course, iron comes to.
Speaker 3: Dominate, especially in the form of steel.
Speaker 2: Yes, I know some will say steel isn't strong, flesh
Speaker 2: is strong, YadA, YadA, YadA, but steel is pretty strong.
Speaker 3: Well, I do want to start within one of the
Speaker 3: regional Bronze ages. To start off today's episode by looking
Speaker 3: at a very intriguing and mysterious artifact from ancient Egypt.
Speaker 3: This is a dagger from the stars found buried alongside
Speaker 3: the pharaoh tutin Common. So the tomb of the eighteenth
Speaker 3: dynasty Egyptian pharaoh tutin Common was uncovered by the British
Speaker 3: archaeologist Howard Carter and his team in nineteen twenty two.
Speaker 3: Tutin Common reigned from thirteen sixty one to thirteen fifty
Speaker 3: two BCE, becoming king around the age of nine or so,
Speaker 3: unruling until his early death around the age of eighteen.
Speaker 3: Tutin Common is thought to have been a son of
Speaker 3: the pharaoh Acinaten, though from what I understand this relationship
Speaker 3: is not totally certain. There is a DNA relationship to
Speaker 3: another mummy that has been found that is presumed to
Speaker 3: be Akinatin, but it's not known for sure. Acinatein his
Speaker 3: likely father, was notable for trying to replace the traditional
Speaker 3: polytheistic religion of Egypt with a It's debatable how to
Speaker 3: characterize this, but a monotheistic or monoltruistic or perhaps henotheistic
Speaker 3: whatever you call it, focus on single God, an emphasis
Speaker 3: of one god above all the others from the Egyptian pantheon,
Speaker 3: and that is the solar deity Atan, which took the
Speaker 3: form of the disk of the Sun. We've talked about
Speaker 3: that sort of attempt to go one God early in
Speaker 3: Egypt before, but this shift did not last long after
Speaker 3: Achinatin's death, and one of Tutonkommon's main accomplishments as pharaoh
Speaker 3: seems to have been the restoration of the old polytheistic cults.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the rejection of new coke and the re acceptance
Speaker 2: of old coke.
Speaker 3: Play in the hits getting the old gang together. So
Speaker 3: Tutancommon's tomb was considered a very special discovery in the
Speaker 3: twentieth century because even though it had been partially looted
Speaker 3: at least twice shortly after it was sealed, it was
Speaker 3: still considered relatively intact compared to other tombs, so many
Speaker 3: of the original grave goods were still in place. And
Speaker 3: this was not really the case at all for most
Speaker 3: of the other royal tombs of ancient Egypt. They were
Speaker 3: mostly scoured by grave robbers thousands of years ago. This
Speaker 3: is sometimes misstated as saying that that Tuten comments Tune
Speaker 3: tomb had never been disturbed, and that's not true. It
Speaker 3: was robbed long ago like all the rest of them,
Speaker 3: it just didn't get robbed as much. And some have
Speaker 3: speculated that Tuton Common's tomb was relatively well preserved because
Speaker 3: the entrance got covered up by stuff and people pretty
Speaker 3: quickly forgot where it was. And so when this tomb
Speaker 3: was rediscovered in the twentieth century, it contained a wealth
Speaker 3: of treasures and a beautiful, wonderful glimpse into the past.
Speaker 3: So for a taste of the variety of objects found
Speaker 3: in the tomb, I just wanted to read directly from
Speaker 3: the diary entry of Howard Carter describing the day of
Speaker 3: November twenty sixth, nineteen twenty two, when his team finally
Speaker 3: cleared away the last of the rubble from the passageway
Speaker 3: into the tomb and got the first look inside. So
Speaker 3: Carter writes, quote, it was sometime before one could see
Speaker 3: the hot air escaping caused the candle to flick, But
Speaker 3: as soon as one's eyes became accustomed to the glimmer
Speaker 3: of light, the interior of the chamber gradually loomed before one,
Speaker 3: with its strange and wonderful medley of extraordinary and beautiful
Speaker 3: objects heaped upon one another. There was naturally short suspense
Speaker 3: for those present who could not see. When Lord Carnivon
Speaker 3: said to me, can you see anything? I replied to him, yes,
Speaker 3: it is wonderful. I then, with precaution, made the whole
Speaker 3: sufficiently large for both of us to see. With the
Speaker 3: light of an electric torch as well as an additional candle,
Speaker 3: we looked in. Our sensations and astonishment are difficult to describe,
Speaker 3: as the better light revealed to us the marvelous collection
Speaker 3: of treasures. Two strange ebony black effigies of a king,
Speaker 3: gold sandaled bearing staff and mace loomed out from the
Speaker 3: cloak of darkness. Gilded couches in strange forms lion headed,
Speaker 3: hathor headed, and beast infernal, exquisitely painted inlaid and ornamental caskets,
Speaker 3: flo alabaster vases, some beautifully executed of lotus and papyrus,
Speaker 3: device strange black shrines with a gilded monster snake appearing
Speaker 3: from within, quite ordinary looking white chests, finely carved chairs,
Speaker 3: a golden inlaid throne, a heap of large, curious white
Speaker 3: oviform boxes beneath our very eyes, on the threshold, a
Speaker 3: lovely lodiform wishing cup in translucent alabaster, stools of all
Speaker 3: shapes and design of both common and rare materials, and lastly,
Speaker 3: a confusion of overturned parts of chariots glinting with gold
Speaker 3: peering from amongst which was a mannikin the first impression
Speaker 3: of which suggested the property room of an opera of
Speaker 3: a vanished civilization. Our sensations were bewildering and full of
Speaker 3: strange emotion. We questioned one another as to the meaning
Speaker 3: of it all. Was it a tomb or merely a cache?
Speaker 3: A sealed doorway between the two sentinel statues proved there
Speaker 3: was more beyond, and with the numerous cartouches bearing the
Speaker 3: name of Touton common on most of the objects before us,
Speaker 3: there was little doubt that there behind was the grave
Speaker 3: of that pharaoh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I like the atmosphere he captures here in
Speaker 2: this description.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite things is the description of the
Speaker 3: disassembled parts of the chariot, all there piled up in
Speaker 3: the tomb. Anyway, documenting the contents of the tomb went
Speaker 3: on for years after the initial discovery, and one of
Speaker 3: the objects found later this was in nineteen twenty five.
Speaker 3: This was buried right along with the pharaoh's body. One
Speaker 3: of these artifacts. It was a beautiful dagger. In fact,
Speaker 3: there were two daggers buried with tooton common, one made
Speaker 3: of gold and another made of iron. And ironically it's
Speaker 3: the iron dagger that I would like to focus on,
Speaker 3: So Rob, I've got some pictures for you to look
Speaker 3: at here, this sort of like with different sides of
Speaker 3: theagger facing and then different types of illumination. But the
Speaker 3: iron dagger is a little over a foot long, and
Speaker 3: it was found not only within the king's tomb but
Speaker 3: with his mummified remains inside the inner coffin, and in
Speaker 3: fact not only in the inner coffin, but literally inside
Speaker 3: the king's wrappings, so wrapped up with him up against
Speaker 3: his thigh, the gold dagger was apparently on his abdomen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a very splendid looking weapon, and there are
Speaker 2: no shortage of images of this, you can easily look
Speaker 2: up online.
Speaker 3: So the knife has a handle made out of gold
Speaker 3: with a crystal knob on the end, sort of very
Speaker 3: smooth and rounded off crystal knob, and a golden sheath
Speaker 3: decorated with images of on one part a repeating feather pattern.
Speaker 3: There are flowers I think maybe supposed to be Lilly's,
Speaker 3: and there's also a jackal's head. And surprisingly, this dagger
Speaker 3: made out of iron remained relatively rust free for all
Speaker 3: these centuries. Though it does have blemishes, they're not rust Instead,
Speaker 3: it has black spots in the middle that to me
Speaker 3: almost look like lunar maria. They're these sort of you know, strange,
Speaker 3: beautiful little black depressions that have almost geographical looking edges.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the stagger made of iron was instantly quite
Speaker 3: interesting to experts because it was made of iron. Tutin
Speaker 3: Common lived at a time when iron artifacts were quite
Speaker 3: rare in Egypt, not completely non existent, but precious and few.
Speaker 3: We associate iron today with raw utility. I think of
Speaker 3: like just stacks of rebar and stuff, you know, Like
Speaker 3: we think of its hardness and toughness and it's ready availability.
Speaker 3: So of course iron and steel steel being a product
Speaker 3: of iron, are thought of as useful for making durable
Speaker 3: workaday tools, machine parts, in architecture, for making bridges and
Speaker 3: framing buildings and so forth. But in Totincman's Egypt, the
Speaker 3: evidence indicates that the rare iron artifacts that did exist
Speaker 3: were treated instead as sacred, decorative and ceremonial items, more
Speaker 3: like we treat gold and silver today, except perhaps even
Speaker 3: more precious. Now, why would something as cheap, abundant and
Speaker 3: mundane as iron be treated as precious sacred material. It
Speaker 3: seems to be because at the time iron was anything
Speaker 3: but abundant and mundane. The mundane iron that we think
Speaker 3: of today is extracted from iron ore that we mine
Speaker 3: out of the ground, and then we extract in pure
Speaker 3: metallic form from its ore form in extremely hot furnaces.
Speaker 3: And while there were plenty of iron ore deposits in
Speaker 3: the deserts of Egypt, there was not a widespread industry
Speaker 3: that was able to separate pure metallic iron from its
Speaker 3: ore in the region until several hundred years later. I
Speaker 3: was iron harder to work with and extract than other metals,
Speaker 3: such as the copper tin alloy that forms the basis
Speaker 3: of ancient bronze. I think that there's sort of a
Speaker 3: more complicated answer and a sort of a simpler answer.
Speaker 3: And the simpler answer is basically higher melting point, like
Speaker 3: it takes more energy to extract iron from its ore,
Speaker 3: and it takes more heat to make it malleable and
Speaker 3: workable once it is extracted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I remember we went into some of this
Speaker 2: back when we did an episode on the One Ring
Speaker 2: of the Lord of the Rings, and you know, talking
Speaker 2: about what kind of metals would would melt or not
Speaker 2: melt the constraints that are laid out in the text.
Speaker 3: However, there was one source of pure or to some
Speaker 3: degree pure metallic iron available before the smelting process was developed,
Speaker 3: and that source of metallic iron was meteorites, chunks of
Speaker 3: iron that fell from space. So experts have, for a
Speaker 3: law some times suggested that maybe King Tut's dagger, and
Speaker 3: not just his dagger, but other iron artifacts that were
Speaker 3: also found within the tomb, and other iron artifacts from
Speaker 3: ancient Egypt from this period and before, were in fact
Speaker 3: meteoric in origin, that they were hammered out of iron
Speaker 3: that fell to Earth from the sky.
Speaker 2: So your exploitive headline here, of course, is ancient Egyptian
Speaker 2: to use space weapons. And I've seen various indulgences of
Speaker 2: that sort of thing. But I mean, yeah, you're not
Speaker 2: too far off the mark with that that even if
Speaker 2: you are implying things that are not true as well.
Speaker 2: I've even seen alien weapons mentioned before.
Speaker 3: Now, before those of you get too excited, no this
Speaker 3: is not ancient alien stuff. No, this would be. This
Speaker 3: does not need to be a gift from aliens that
Speaker 3: came from above. Because meteorites still land on Earth today.
Speaker 3: They land naturally. People can find them.
Speaker 2: Right right, And that of course is especially true if
Speaker 2: you if in one or two situations with meteorites, is
Speaker 2: it dramatic in its entry or do you have an
Speaker 2: environment in which objects like this are easy to find,
Speaker 2: such as a desert. So you will find various desert
Speaker 2: environments where there is a long tradition of gathering such
Speaker 2: meteorites because they stand out more. But you know, even
Speaker 2: if you see or think you see something fall, you
Speaker 2: can also get into trouble trying to find what fell
Speaker 2: from the sky. We've talked about the phenomena of star
Speaker 2: jelly before. This is where someone sees a shooting star
Speaker 2: or thinks the meteorite has fallen in their general vicinity,
Speaker 2: and they go out into the woods and they start
Speaker 2: poking around. Do they find something that they think looks
Speaker 2: weird And it may be like just some sort of
Speaker 2: slimy substance in the forest. It's a slimy substance that
Speaker 2: was always there, or it is frequently there, but they
Speaker 2: just never went out and poked it and looked for
Speaker 2: it before. So ultimately you have to know what you're doing.
Speaker 2: But a desert environment can be a real gift to
Speaker 2: the meteorite hunter.
Speaker 3: That's right. So what is a meteorite, Well, a meteorite is,
Speaker 3: in short, any solid natural object that falls from space
Speaker 3: through our atmosphere and reaches the surface of the Earth intact.
Speaker 3: And this usually means a chunk of a rocky asteroid.
Speaker 3: It seems that's what it is in most cases, but
Speaker 3: some cases could possibly mean pieces of comets or even
Speaker 3: pieces of other planets. Sometimes there'll be an impact and
Speaker 3: a piece of Mars or something else breaks off and
Speaker 3: will end up falling to Earth somehow. Now, most meteorites
Speaker 3: found on Earth are not primarily made of iron. There
Speaker 3: are three main types of meteorites. You've got stony meteorites,
Speaker 3: which are made mostly of silicon based rock. There are
Speaker 3: iron meteorites, which are primarily made of solid metal, mostly
Speaker 3: iron with some nickel and other trace metals. And then
Speaker 3: there's a hybrid category, which are often considered quite beautiful,
Speaker 3: maybe the most visually striking of all of them, the
Speaker 3: stony iron meteorites, which are a pretty close to even
Speaker 3: mix of iron metal and silicate rock. Now, iron meteorites
Speaker 3: are not the most common types of meteorites to fall
Speaker 3: to Earth. I've read estimates that they're only about like
Speaker 3: five or six percent of meteorite falls. But they are
Speaker 3: sometimes easier to find than stony meteorites. And this might
Speaker 3: be in part due to their durability and the environment
Speaker 3: and really stick around, but also probably in part because
Speaker 3: they look weirder and more alien. And stony meteorites can
Speaker 3: look a lot of different ways, but Rob, I just
Speaker 3: attached a few examples for you to look at. A
Speaker 3: lot of stony meteorites you could easily mistake for an
Speaker 3: earth based rock, but iron meteorites more often, I guess
Speaker 3: you could still mistake them for an earth based rock,
Speaker 3: but more of them look like really strange.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they have a very novel appearance that even the
Speaker 2: novice would would likely look at and think, well, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: I should pick that up and maybe take this back
Speaker 2: and show it to someone who knows what's up with rocks,
Speaker 2: because yeah, they have this fascinating kind of you know,
Speaker 2: like cool liquid kind of appearance, with all these dimples
Speaker 2: and creases and so forth.
Speaker 3: Why is this a metal brain the size of a
Speaker 3: bear in the middle of the desert? What is that?
Speaker 3: Iron meteorites are thought to probably be the remaining cores
Speaker 3: of asteroids that at some point asteroids or parts of
Speaker 3: former planetesimals that at some point melted and then re solidified.
Speaker 3: They're mostly made of iron, Like I said, they have
Speaker 3: some nickel content, as well as other traces of minerals
Speaker 3: and metals, some cobalt content, some phosphorus, some sulfur, and
Speaker 3: so forth. They are often found on Earth covered in
Speaker 3: a black or rusty crust of iron oxide that forms
Speaker 3: as they travel through the atmosphere. And there are two
Speaker 3: primary minerals found in iron meteorites. You've got camosite, which
Speaker 3: has relatively less nickel, and tainite, which has relatively more.
Speaker 3: Within iron meteorites, these two minerals, chemosite and taanite are
Speaker 3: quite often found in an interesting interlocking crystal structure which
Speaker 3: when you cut a cross section of one of these
Speaker 3: meteorites and you treat it with a weak or diluted acid,
Speaker 3: it reveals this repeating arrangement of lines, known as a
Speaker 3: Vidminstottin pattern, And to try to describe this, it looks
Speaker 3: kind of like a texture of infinite triangles within triangles,
Speaker 3: or you might say like a fractal representation of a
Speaker 3: capital letter A in the English alphabet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks very very sci fi, very futuristic, kind
Speaker 2: of like some sort of you know, a chrome etching
Speaker 2: of the interior scaffolding of the death Star or something.
Speaker 3: To come back to our stuff on anomalous imagery, it's
Speaker 3: one of those things that there are all kinds of
Speaker 3: patterns like this in nature that make people say that's technology,
Speaker 3: but that's just what these crystals do. And in fact,
Speaker 3: the way this specifically look seems to be a result
Speaker 3: of creating a two dimensional cross sectional representation of an
Speaker 3: underlying three dimensional structure that's known as an octahedral. So
Speaker 3: an octahedron is a polyhedron, a three dimensional structure with
Speaker 3: eight faces. So you can picture like two four sided
Speaker 3: pyramids joined at the square base, or if you're a
Speaker 3: D and D player, you just picture a D eight die.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's sematar damage.
Speaker 3: So the octahedral structure is created by the interaction of
Speaker 3: these two different minerals chemisite and tanite, they form these
Speaker 3: different bands and boundaries, and then when they come together
Speaker 3: like that, and you cut through the middle of a
Speaker 3: meteorite and you look at the pattern it makes, it's
Speaker 3: this vidmin Stottin pattern. Now, we might come back and
Speaker 3: talk more about iron meteorites themselves in the next episode.
Speaker 3: But an interesting question is, so it was proposed long
Speaker 3: ago that King Tut's dagger, as well as many of
Speaker 3: these other iron artifacts, were made out of meteorite iron.
Speaker 3: But is the dagger really meteorite iron? And if so,
Speaker 3: how could we know? Well, there have been multiple investigations
Speaker 3: of this over the years and they've come up with
Speaker 3: For a while, they came up with conflicting results. There
Speaker 3: was some controversy over this, were different results, different investigators
Speaker 3: came to different conclusions. But it seems to be that
Speaker 3: the more recent research points very strongly to a meteoric origin.
Speaker 3: So I'll mention a couple of studies. One is by
Speaker 3: Daniellocomelli at All that was published in the journal Metiorritics
Speaker 3: and Planetary Science in the year twenty sixteen, and it's
Speaker 3: called the Meteoritic Origin of Toutencommon's iron dagger blade. Now,
Speaker 3: one thing that is an obstacle when you investigating this
Speaker 3: sort of thing is method because modern science has lots
Speaker 3: of very powerful tools of chemical analysis, but many of
Speaker 3: them are destructive techniques, so you would have to destroy
Speaker 3: some small part of the artifact in order to analyze it.
Speaker 3: And for obvious historical preservation reasons, researchers wanted to avoid
Speaker 3: having to destroy part of a priceless historical dagger in
Speaker 3: order to figure out what it's made of. So this investigation,
Speaker 3: which by the way, the team was made up of
Speaker 3: both Italian and Egyptian researchers, they use non destructive methods,
Speaker 3: so they analyze the blade with a non destructive imaging
Speaker 3: technique called X ray fluorescence spectrometry to determine the composition
Speaker 3: of the blade. So the way that works is you
Speaker 3: bombard the blade with some radiation. They use like a
Speaker 3: portable X ray scanner. You bombard it with some radiation
Speaker 3: and then that radiation causes the atoms in the blade
Speaker 3: to floor to give off light energy as they're you know,
Speaker 3: as the radiation hits the electrons that are orbiting the
Speaker 3: atoms and then causes some of them to fall down
Speaker 3: to lower energy levels and that puts off radiation in return,
Speaker 3: and by analyzing what gets reflected back, you can see
Speaker 3: what types of elements that it's made of. And what
Speaker 3: they found was that the composition of the blade was
Speaker 3: iron with a high percentage of nickel and cobalt. So
Speaker 3: I think they found that it was mostly iron, with
Speaker 3: ten point eight percent by weight nickel and zero point
Speaker 3: five to eight percent by weight cobalt, and these numbers
Speaker 3: are are not to be found in earth based iron generally.
Speaker 3: Studies have found that earth based iron extracted from before
Speaker 3: like the eighteen hundreds, tends to always have less than
Speaker 3: four percent nickel by weight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I was reading some sources about this as well,
Speaker 2: and yeah, a lot of it seems to come back
Speaker 2: to the nickel, though.
Speaker 3: I've read some criticisms that you shouldn't go by the
Speaker 3: nickel alone and that to really be sure you should
Speaker 3: look at like some other comparison points as well, like
Speaker 3: the ratio of nickel to cobalt. I think some other
Speaker 3: things as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was one paper I was looking at Albert
Speaker 2: Jambond from twenty seventeen Bronze age iron meteoritic or not.
Speaker 2: And this is the additional subheading subtitle a chemical strategy.
Speaker 2: And in this one they pointed out like weathering is
Speaker 2: also sometimes something that has to be taken into place
Speaker 2: given the nickel levels that can be detected, and it
Speaker 2: may have to do with like basically a weathering away
Speaker 2: of some of the nickel content at least on the
Speaker 2: testable portions of an artifact.
Speaker 3: But from what I could tell, most researchers are pretty
Speaker 3: well convinced by this and other recent studies. There's another
Speaker 3: one I'm gonna mention in a second saying that this
Speaker 3: probably really is meteorite. So speaking to the BBC, the
Speaker 3: lead author, Daniella Coomelli, who by the way, is that
Speaker 3: she's an experimental physic assist affiliated with the Polytechnic University
Speaker 3: of Milan, she sounds pretty confident. She says meteoric iron
Speaker 3: is clearly indicated by the presence of this high percentage
Speaker 3: of nickel, and in fact, the authors of this study
Speaker 3: from twenty sixteen even matched the composition of the blade
Speaker 3: of Tutencommon's dagger to that of a known meteorite in
Speaker 3: the region, one which landed about two hundred and forty
Speaker 3: kilometers west of the city of Alexandria. They also argue
Speaker 3: that the blade shows what they call a high manufacturing quality,
Speaker 3: which is not found in some of the other simple
Speaker 3: artifacts made out of meteorite iron from this period in Egypt.
Speaker 3: So it shows that someone at this time had the
Speaker 3: ability to work with iron at a high level. But
Speaker 3: this type of craftsmanship must have been rare.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, rare craftsmanship besitting of a rare material. There's
Speaker 2: one little bit I want to side here. This is
Speaker 2: from the Brian M. Fagan book The Seventy Great Inventions
Speaker 2: of the Ancient World. Paul T. Kratoc is the main
Speaker 2: writer on a chapter in that that deals with with
Speaker 2: iron and other metals, and Kratak mentions the dagger of Tutankammon,
Speaker 2: and there's an excellent photo of it in that book.
Speaker 2: But then he adds an additional detail from the following century.
Speaker 2: So this is a different culture because as we've already
Speaker 2: mentioned there there are other examples of meteoric iron being
Speaker 2: used in very regal, very ornamental pieces like this and
Speaker 2: this one, this particular one is referred to in a letter.
Speaker 2: This is from twelve to fifty BCE. We have a
Speaker 2: letter from the Hittite ruler Tatusilius the third to the
Speaker 2: king of Assyria, and in this letter he apologizes for
Speaker 2: not being able to supply iron and instead hopes that
Speaker 2: the guilt to a single accompanying iron blade will be
Speaker 2: acceptable Socratic rights quote. So in twelve fifty BC, a
Speaker 2: single iron blade from the one available source of iron
Speaker 2: was an appropriate placiatory gift to another monarch. So, I mean,
Speaker 2: you can also see that in the fact that, yeah,
Speaker 2: King tut is buried with one of these blades, you know,
Speaker 2: within his wrappings. But you know, here's this other case
Speaker 2: where it's like it just more evidence that like, these
Speaker 2: things were so highly valued. These are the kind of
Speaker 2: things that kings gave to each other, you know, these
Speaker 2: are the kind of things that kings were buried with.
Speaker 2: But Kradack also points out that mere centuries later, iron
Speaker 2: making industry would end up stretching across Eurasia. So again,
Speaker 2: iron ore is very common, but it is the last
Speaker 2: metal of antiquity to be smelted, due in part to
Speaker 2: the high melting point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm almost trying to imagine. I mean, I guess
Speaker 3: the change took place. I suppose over a long enough
Speaker 3: period of time that you wouldn't have really had stuff
Speaker 3: like this, I guess. But I'm imagining somebody clutching extremely valuable,
Speaker 3: you know, precious iron artifacts of a ceremonial value, and
Speaker 3: then suddenly, like the you know, the iron working and
Speaker 3: the iron smelting comes into vogue, and now iron is
Speaker 3: all over the place, and it's just it's not the
Speaker 3: same anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they would still have the appeal of having
Speaker 2: this source that is associated with the sky as having
Speaker 2: come from heaven or from the cosmos and the gods
Speaker 2: and so forth. And that is something that I've seen
Speaker 2: reference in some other sources that I'll probably come back
Speaker 2: to later on that certainly in the Chinese examples. You know,
Speaker 2: the Chinese were the ancient Chinese were aware of meteorites,
Speaker 2: that they knew about these various events, and they wrote
Speaker 2: about them in their early literature, and therefore there was
Speaker 2: likely this connection in place. So it was this precious
Speaker 2: metal that was unlike the metal used for other tools
Speaker 2: and so forth, unlike even other precious metals and other
Speaker 2: stones and so forth that were used. But then there
Speaker 2: was also the story behind it, the idea that it
Speaker 2: has some sort of connection to the Cosmos.
Speaker 3: I want to get to something about that story within
Speaker 3: an Egyptian context in just a minute. But first I
Speaker 3: promised I was going to mention another study on the
Speaker 3: meteor origin of the iron in the blade. So the
Speaker 3: other study I wanted to point out was from twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two. This is in the journal I think, same journal, Yeah,
Speaker 3: same journal, Metiaritics and Planetary Science. And this is by
Speaker 3: Takafumi Matsui at All and it's called the Manufacture and
Speaker 3: Origin of the toot And Common Metiorritic Iron Dagger. And
Speaker 3: this paper further supports the conclusion that the iron in
Speaker 3: the King's dagger is from a meteorite, and not only that,
Speaker 3: adds evidence about what kind of meteorite, And so the
Speaker 3: author's right quote. Here we report non destructive two dimensional
Speaker 3: chemical analysis of the tutencommon iron dagger conducted at the
Speaker 3: Egyptian Museum of Cairo. Elemental mapping of nickel on the
Speaker 3: dagger blade surface shows discontinuous banded arrangements in places with
Speaker 3: cubic symmetry and a bandwidth of about one millimeters, suggesting
Speaker 3: a vidmin stotton pattern. Remember that, yeah, ah, yeah, So
Speaker 3: the intermediate nickel content with the presence of the vidmin
Speaker 3: stotton pattern implies the source meteorite of the dagger blade
Speaker 3: to be octahedrite. So again, that's the octahedron the d
Speaker 3: eight die. Furthermore, they say that the quote randomly distributed
Speaker 3: sulfur rich black spots are likely remnants of troylite inclusions
Speaker 3: in iron meteorite. So remember those black spots I mentioned
Speaker 3: on the dagger that I said looked like lunar maria,
Speaker 3: You know, those strange kind of geographical looking depressions and
Speaker 3: dark spots. These authors conclude that those are probably sulfur
Speaker 3: rich troylite inclusions, little impurities in the original metal made
Speaker 3: of mineral iron sulfide and so iron sulfide. By the way,
Speaker 3: you ever boil a hard boiled egg too long and
Speaker 3: it ends up with a green cake forming around the yolk,
Speaker 3: that's iron sulfide. I think hydrogen sulfide in the egg
Speaker 3: white reacts with with iron and the egg yolk and
Speaker 3: make iron sulfide. So yeah, that's that's what the gross
Speaker 3: green stuff is. It's not gonna hurts you. You can
Speaker 3: still eat it.
Speaker 2: You're not a fan of green eggs.
Speaker 3: Well, no, I'm fine with all full green eggs. I
Speaker 3: don't love the green the green case around the yolk.
Speaker 3: I feel like you boiled that too long. That's a no, no, okay.
Speaker 2: I won't do any of the follow up questions about
Speaker 2: whether you would need it with a goat and so forth.
Speaker 3: I need anything with a goat. You know. Goat's just
Speaker 3: good company that makes even unpalatable food. Fine.
Speaker 2: Yes, they are quite amusing anyway.
Speaker 3: The authors of the paper argue that the vidmuns dot
Speaker 3: and pattern and the troilite inclusions, the fact that those
Speaker 3: were preserved, these things together indicate that the iron was
Speaker 3: probably forged and worked at low temperatures of less than
Speaker 3: nine hundred and fifty degrees celsius. They also even use
Speaker 3: material analysis to not just say, like what physically the
Speaker 3: stagger is, but to connect it to some historical documents.
Speaker 3: I don't think they were the first people to make
Speaker 3: this connection, but they used some material analysis to kind
Speaker 3: of back it up. So the authors here argued that
Speaker 3: this stagger was quite possibly a gift given to Tutankhommon's
Speaker 3: likely grandfather. I'm Innhotep the third from the Kingdom of
Speaker 3: Mitani in Anatolia. Because there is a tablet mentioning such
Speaker 3: a gift among Egyptian records. There's a tablet that says,
Speaker 3: you know, they're sending a gift to I'm Inhotep the
Speaker 3: third and it's described as an iron dagger with a
Speaker 3: golden hilt. And then the bit of material evidence that
Speaker 3: backs this up is that there is lime plaster used
Speaker 3: to glue jim stones to the gold hilt, and that
Speaker 3: lime plaster glue is characteristic of Mittani craftsmanship rather than Egyptian,
Speaker 3: which tended to use gypsum plaster instead. So this dagger,
Speaker 3: wrapped up with the body of King Tut inside his
Speaker 3: wrappings laying on his thigh, seems to have been made
Speaker 3: out of metal that came from a meteorite. And it's
Speaker 3: a good guess that this was a gift to King
Speaker 3: Tut's grandfather from Anatolia.
Speaker 2: Wow, now some of you are probably wondering, well, which
Speaker 2: god was in charge of all of this. So a
Speaker 2: brief sidebar here on this in general, and for this
Speaker 2: I turned once more to Geraldine Pinch's book and Egyptian mythology,
Speaker 2: and essentially we should probably point out, yeah, that the
Speaker 2: Egyptian god associated with metal working is the god Taw,
Speaker 2: and not only is Ta associated with metalworking, he's also
Speaker 2: held up as a kind of creator deity in some
Speaker 2: of these traditions. Said to have designed and crafted the
Speaker 2: world have to have smelt the new lands, and I
Speaker 2: found this interesting. Made bodies for the kings of Egypt
Speaker 2: out of electrum, copper, and iron bodies according to Pinch,
Speaker 2: that were presumably made so that they could occupy those
Speaker 2: bodies in the lands beyond death. So this would be
Speaker 2: like your resurrected metal body for the next world. He
Speaker 2: Ta here, though is often described as being beautiful of face.
Speaker 2: His skin is often described as being blue, though I've
Speaker 2: also seen it green in some depictions. He wears an
Speaker 2: artisan's cap, and he's associated with dwarves, perhaps to the
Speaker 2: fact that dwarves were often employed in gym working. And
Speaker 2: this on its own is a pretty fast any topic,
Speaker 2: the role of dwarfs in ancient Egypt. There are a
Speaker 2: few different papers on this. Some of these individuals worked
Speaker 2: in entertainment or as personal attendants. Others were animal tenders
Speaker 2: and indeed jewelers, but also there were individuals of the
Speaker 2: Old Kingdom who rose to high rank and status and
Speaker 2: were buried as such, and we're able to tell they
Speaker 2: had that status because of the way they were buried.
Speaker 2: So it's often argued that cultural acceptance was pretty high
Speaker 2: for them, and Ta was ultimately just one of multiple
Speaker 2: gods held to have a dwarf in form of one
Speaker 2: sort or another. And Ta also would later be equated
Speaker 2: with Hephaestus by the Greeks, though of course Ephaestus was
Speaker 2: not beautiful of face, I think in most traditions.
Speaker 3: So meteorites have of course been found by people since prehistory,
Speaker 3: but how often did we actually understand what they were
Speaker 3: and where they came from. Just one example of people
Speaker 3: not generally accepting that meteorites came from outer space is
Speaker 3: European scientists up until the early nineteenth century. There's a
Speaker 3: good summary of this history of the debate about the
Speaker 3: origin of meteorites in the book Cosmic Horizons, edited by
Speaker 3: Steven Soder and Neil de Gras Tyson. I think it
Speaker 3: was published in the year two thousand and The short
Speaker 3: version of the story is that there have long been
Speaker 3: reports from people seeing fireballs in the sky or hearing explosions,
Speaker 3: then finding rocks that they believed had fallen from above.
Speaker 3: But as of the late eighteenth century, most scientists of
Speaker 3: the European Enlightenment doubted that stones actually fell from the sky,
Speaker 3: or if they did believe it, they thought maybe that
Speaker 3: the stones came from somewhere on Earth. They couldn't have
Speaker 3: come from outer space. Maybe they were thrown from a
Speaker 3: distant volcano, or maybe they were picked up and tossed
Speaker 3: by a hurricane far away. Because at the time there
Speaker 3: was a sort of a dogma. There was a convention
Speaker 3: that space, apart from the planets and the comets, was empty.
Speaker 3: You know, you got the Earth, you got the Sun,
Speaker 3: the planets, the stars, the comets, but other than that,
Speaker 3: it's just empty out there. There's not like stuff flying around. However,
Speaker 3: a German physicist by the name of Ernst Kladney, who
Speaker 3: lived seventeen fifty six to eighteen twenty seven, published a
Speaker 3: book in the year seventeen ninety four arguing that these
Speaker 3: reports were accurate and that rocks and pieces of iron
Speaker 3: actually do sometimes fall from the sky, in some cases
Speaker 3: creating fireballs and explosions as they are heated by friction
Speaker 3: traveling through the atmosphere. Claudney was an interesting guy. He
Speaker 3: was a lawyer by training, but he was also very
Speaker 3: into music and acoustics, and he discovered a way of
Speaker 3: visualizing sound wave by putting dust or powder on a
Speaker 3: plate and then vibrating the plate by rubbing it with
Speaker 3: a violin bow, and so the powder would range itself
Speaker 3: into these patterns that were related to the sound waves produced.
Speaker 3: Claudney went about collecting eyewitness reports of fireballs and meteorite
Speaker 3: falls from the sky, and he tried to evaluate them
Speaker 3: for credibility and see what could be learned from them,
Speaker 3: and eventually he concluded that yes, rocks really do fall
Speaker 3: from space. One thing he did was use descriptions of
Speaker 3: fireballs to estimate the speed at which these rocks were
Speaker 3: entering the Earth's atmosphere, and he realized they must be
Speaker 3: going much faster than could be accounted for by the
Speaker 3: Earth's gravity alone, so they're not simply falling, but they
Speaker 3: must be flying through space at extreme velocities. And this
Speaker 3: connected with the fact that when these alleged rocks were found,
Speaker 3: they looked scorched all over. The friction of entering the
Speaker 3: atmosphere at these high speeds melt to their outer shells,
Speaker 3: and so he looked into it He published this book
Speaker 3: in seventeen ninety four, and it was initially met with
Speaker 3: skepticism by his peers by European scientists, but many scientists
Speaker 3: updated their beliefs due to new emerging evidence. They sort
Speaker 3: of got lucky with some things, some documented events that
Speaker 3: really backed up his argument, including a widely reported meteor
Speaker 3: fall near Siena, Italy, just a couple of months after
Speaker 3: the book was published, another one in England which included
Speaker 3: an eyewitness account of a farmer who claimed a black
Speaker 3: rock hit the earth only thirty feet away from him
Speaker 3: and caused an explosion in the mud that splattered all
Speaker 3: over his body. And then there was another one in
Speaker 3: Normandy in eighteen oh three, which was extensively documented by
Speaker 3: the French physicist Jean Baptiste bo which included reports of
Speaker 3: a fireball as well as an elliptical impact area that
Speaker 3: had many weird stones within it. These reports were supplemented
Speaker 3: by chemical and mineral analysis of some of these meteorite samples,
Speaker 3: and it turned out that these samples were unlike any
Speaker 3: rocks or metal ores known of on Earth. For example,
Speaker 3: the rocks contained what they called at the time globules.
Speaker 3: These are now known as chondrules, their little round grains
Speaker 3: within the structure of the rock that begin as molten
Speaker 3: droplets of minerals in space, and then a crete together
Speaker 3: within asteroids. Also connecting to what we've already found, they
Speaker 3: discovered that iron meteorite fragments contained levels of nickel that
Speaker 3: had never been observed in Earth based iron. And then
Speaker 3: finally another piece of evidence was the discovery of the
Speaker 3: first asteroid, the Dwarf Planet series in eighteen oh one,
Speaker 3: which suggested that space between the planets and the comets
Speaker 3: was not empty. There were lots of rocky things floating
Speaker 3: around out there, and some of them might occasionally land
Speaker 3: on Earth, and that was in fact what meteorites were.
Speaker 3: So it was more than one hundred years after Newton's
Speaker 3: principia that the true origin of meteorites was widely accepted
Speaker 3: among European scientists. But that brings me to an article
Speaker 3: that I wanted to talk about to address the question
Speaker 3: of what the ancient Egyptians knew. So I was reading
Speaker 3: an article in the anthropology magazine Sapiens written by an
Speaker 3: Egyptologist who named Victoria almansa Villatorro. This is from twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three and if Almansa Villatoro's argument is correct, the
Speaker 3: fact that meteorites come from space or from the sky
Speaker 3: was known to the ancient Egyptians. Just one cool example
Speaker 3: she mentions in the article is there's an interesting inscription
Speaker 3: in hieroglyphics inside the pyramid of Unus at Sakara. Unus
Speaker 3: was the last pharaoh of the Fifth dynasty during Egypt's
Speaker 3: Old Kingdom, and he ruled in the middle of the
Speaker 3: twenty fourth century BCE, so like forty four hundred years ago,
Speaker 3: and the sentence from the pyramid text reads, Eunice the
Speaker 3: king seizes the sky and splits its iron. Now, this
Speaker 3: article in Sapiens is based somewhat on almans Of Villatorro's
Speaker 3: academic publication in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology from twenty
Speaker 3: nineteen called the Cultural Indexicality of the N forty one
Speaker 3: sign for beat this. Oh, this's got some strange characters.
Speaker 3: BJ three sort of is what it looks like the
Speaker 3: metal of the sky and the sky of metal. Now,
Speaker 3: this includes a lot of linguistic arguments that are way
Speaker 3: over my head, but I was just going through to
Speaker 3: get the main point and pull out some details. And
Speaker 3: one of the things I wanted to get to. I
Speaker 3: wanted to mention briefly just because I thought it was
Speaker 3: interesting before getting to remain conclusions or about the religious
Speaker 3: and ceremonial functions of iron Almansa. Villaturro mentions in the
Speaker 3: paper that pre Iron Age iron artifacts are associated in
Speaker 3: Egypt with an elaborate funerary ritual known as the opening
Speaker 3: of the Mouth, which was a sort of ceremony performed
Speaker 3: over a dead body. I think often of a king
Speaker 3: or a ruler, but a ceremony over a body that
Speaker 3: seems to be sort of activated the powers of life
Speaker 3: beyond death. It's sort of like turning on after life
Speaker 3: mode to give you the powers of like eating and
Speaker 3: drinking and speaking in the afterlife. And I briefly got
Speaker 3: very interested in this. So this was not in the paper,
Speaker 3: but I went looking for a text of the spoken
Speaker 3: part of the opening of the mouth ceremony. I think
Speaker 3: there are a lot of different versions of this, but
Speaker 3: the one I found in particular was a translation of
Speaker 3: the ritual from the tomb chapel of rek Mira, which
Speaker 3: involved like dedicating a statue of the dead, and the
Speaker 3: text includes the following lines. There's a letter, a capital
Speaker 3: letter in here which just refers to the name of
Speaker 3: the dead. So when you hear in, you think of
Speaker 3: the name of the dead. It goes, I have balanced
Speaker 3: your mouth and bones for you.
Speaker 1: In.
Speaker 3: I have opened your mouth for you.
Speaker 1: In.
Speaker 3: I open your mouth for you with the new uplade.
Speaker 3: I have opened your mouth for you with the new uplade.
Speaker 3: The mesca hetch you blade of iron that opens the
Speaker 3: mouths of gods. Horace is the opener of the mouth
Speaker 3: of N. Horace. Horace has opened the mouth of N.
Speaker 3: Horace has opened the mouth of N with that which
Speaker 3: he opened the mouth of his father, with which he
Speaker 3: opened the mouth of Osiris, with the iron that came
Speaker 3: from Seth. The mesketch you blade of iron with which
Speaker 3: the mouths of gods are opened. May you open the
Speaker 3: mouth of N with it?
Speaker 2: Nice And we get that connection back to Osyrus, who
Speaker 2: we talked about previously on the show. This is interesting too,
Speaker 2: because then when I was researching Taw, who I talked
Speaker 2: about earlier, the Egyptian god associated with craftsmanship. There was
Speaker 2: also mention in Pinch's work about the opening of the
Speaker 2: mouth ceremony and elsewhere in the book. She talks about
Speaker 2: the Horus connection and so forth, but it's seems like
Speaker 2: Todd did have some sort of connection to this as well,
Speaker 2: and she mentions that it was used for mummies but
Speaker 2: also for sculptures, and maybe given his craftsmanship angle, he's
Speaker 2: more aligned with that end of it. I'm not entirely certain,
Speaker 2: but yeah, imbuing life into the sculpture, embodying it somehow,
Speaker 2: and like you said, perhaps turning on after life mode
Speaker 2: for the mummified body of an important person.
Speaker 3: But also very interesting that implements specifically of iron are
Speaker 3: associated with this ritual, that it has some kind of
Speaker 3: mythical or ritual potency here. So all months of Villatorro
Speaker 3: in this article gets into the fact that before the
Speaker 3: widespread or large scale smelting of iron and iron working
Speaker 3: within Egypt, there are still these iron artifacts that are
Speaker 3: thought to be made primarily of iron sourced from meteorites,
Speaker 3: and that they almost always again serve this more ceremonial
Speaker 3: or decorative function. They are either objects of kind of
Speaker 3: wealth and power and decoration. They symbolize status maybe or
Speaker 3: that they have this religious significance. But anyway, I wanted
Speaker 3: to come back to the core question of like what
Speaker 3: is the evidence that the ancient Egyptians actually understood that
Speaker 3: this meteoritic iron or meteorite iron came from the sky.
Speaker 3: And so she writes, in the second millennium BCE, the
Speaker 3: Egyptian word or phrase used to refer to iron was
Speaker 3: a phrase that literally can mean the metal of the
Speaker 3: sky or the iron of the sky, and there are
Speaker 3: early known Egyptian associations between iron and the sky. So
Speaker 3: you've got the pyramid pyramid text which are texts inscribed
Speaker 3: on the inner walls of the pyramids where the Egyptian
Speaker 3: kings and queens of the fifth to eighth dynasties of
Speaker 3: the Old Kingdom were buried. This would cover a period
Speaker 3: of forty one hundred forty four hundred years ago or so.
Speaker 3: These texts included incantations that would be recited by priests
Speaker 3: to guide the dead rulers into the afterlife. And the
Speaker 3: pyramid texts describe a really interesting cosmology, really interesting picture
Speaker 3: of how the universe was shaped. And in her work,
Speaker 3: Almans of Villatro argues that the way they described the
Speaker 3: sky should be pictured as a giant iron bowl with
Speaker 3: water in it, and water can fall from the bowl.
Speaker 3: I guess that's rain, but also chunks of the iron
Speaker 3: bowl itself can fall to the earth, and these would
Speaker 3: be iron meteorites. Now the author admits that it's not
Speaker 3: obvious this is what's being described. You have to sort
Speaker 3: of decode a linked system of metaphors within the glyphs
Speaker 3: of the Egyptian language. She writes, quote, in the Pyramid texts,
Speaker 3: the word for iron is written with a hieroglyph that
Speaker 3: represents a hemispherical container of water. How the Egyptians perceived
Speaker 3: the sky. Iron and sky are interchangeable in the texts,
Speaker 3: which is why passages describe the dead sling the iron
Speaker 3: and the king needing to break an iron barrier to
Speaker 3: reach the sky. And then she documents how there are
Speaker 3: also links between the concept of iron and the concept
Speaker 3: of water, because remember, in many ancient cosmologies, people sort
Speaker 3: of believe the sky was in some sense full of water,
Speaker 3: and so maybe when it rains, that's water leaking out
Speaker 3: of the waters above. And so Almans of Vulatora writes
Speaker 3: that the goddess Newt personified the sky. But also at
Speaker 3: this period there are religious texts explaining the belief that
Speaker 3: in the afterlife a dead royal would return to the
Speaker 3: waters of nuts Uterus, and so this sign used for
Speaker 3: iron is also associated with the word for uterus and
Speaker 3: the word for well, like water well. And so she
Speaker 3: admits there might be legitimate reasons for doubting this interpretation
Speaker 3: that these associations mean that the Egyptians knew that iron
Speaker 3: meteorites came from the sky. And one is the simple
Speaker 3: question of, like, how likely is it in a given
Speaker 3: space and time period that someone would be able to,
Speaker 3: like have the like witness a meteorite falling, which itself
Speaker 3: is a fairly rare event, witness it falling, and then
Speaker 3: have it be lucky enough that it lands very physically
Speaker 3: close that you can close enough that you can go
Speaker 3: find the physical meteorite and then associate it with the
Speaker 3: falling you saw from above and put all that information
Speaker 3: together and then also pass it on for it to
Speaker 3: become general cultural knowledge. You know, that would take a
Speaker 3: sort of like a lucky confluence of events that themselves
Speaker 3: might be fairly rare, but you know, it happens often
Speaker 3: enough that there are records of other times in places
Speaker 3: where people did see something falling and then they claim
Speaker 3: to have found a stone or something. So it's certainly
Speaker 3: not impossible, And in the case of ancient Egypt, it
Speaker 3: seems like there's this linguistic and literary evidence that would
Speaker 3: help support that idea that people did have this cultural
Speaker 3: knowledge making a link between iron and the sky and
Speaker 3: the waters above.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and again perhaps throwing in the idea of
Speaker 2: the desert being an ideal place to spot them in
Speaker 2: the dark stone standing out against of a lighter colored sand,
Speaker 2: and so forth. May come back to meteorite hunting a
Speaker 2: little bit in subsequent episodes to explore this aspect of
Speaker 2: everything a bit more.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, Oh, one more thing she knows that I
Speaker 3: think is interesting. This is not totally unique to the
Speaker 3: Egyptian language. She also notes that there is a similar
Speaker 3: sort of linguistic link in ancient Sumerian, which also characterizes
Speaker 3: iron as sort of the metal of the sky.
Speaker 2: Excellent, excellent. Well, in the next episode, I think we're
Speaker 2: going to get into some more examples. We're gonna we're
Speaker 2: going to keep exploring the overall topic, but we'll also
Speaker 2: get into some other specific examples from other cultures. Well,
Speaker 2: we'll sort of ask some of the same questions of
Speaker 2: Chinese traditions. You know, did they know that that this
Speaker 2: iron came from above and what did that mean to
Speaker 2: them and so forth. So, yeah, there are a lot
Speaker 2: of additional interesting angles to explore. And there are some
Speaker 2: other other examples and alleged examples of meteoric iron being
Speaker 2: used in artifacts that are related to to cultures that
Speaker 2: that I didn't even know how to tradition of using
Speaker 2: such substances. So it'll be it'll be fascinating to continue.
Speaker 3: To explore this, no doubt. I'm excited.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So in the meantime, if you have thoughts on
Speaker 2: this topic, if you if there are specific examples you
Speaker 2: want to get in there early and say yes, make
Speaker 2: sure you cover this, go ahead and hit us with it.
Speaker 2: You know we're we're in we're still in research mode here.
Speaker 2: We're still writing up the notes, so you know, there's
Speaker 2: time to get it in there, and if not, it's
Speaker 2: something we can discuss on our listener mail episodes. Our
Speaker 2: listener Mail episodes published Mondays in the Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind podcast feed. Our core episodes are on Tuesdays
Speaker 2: and Thursdays. Short form episode on Wednesdays and on Fridays.
Speaker 2: We set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 2: a weird film on Weird House Cinema. You can follow
Speaker 2: us wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a nice review,
Speaker 2: maybe some sprinkling of stars if you want to be
Speaker 2: generous and support the show, and a if you want
Speaker 2: to follow us on social media, We're available in a
Speaker 2: number of places. Look us up on Instagram, Look us
Speaker 2: up on Facebook. There's a Facebook group, the Stuff to
Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind discussion module, where you can interact with
Speaker 2: other fans. There's also a discord page or what did
Speaker 2: we decided to discord us called a server? Perhaps? Well,
Speaker 2: you can email us and we'll send you the link
Speaker 2: so that you can go there.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hi,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.