Egyptian Jewelry From Space

[LadyTevar]

Ancient Egyptian jewelry came from outer space

Ancient Egyptian beads found in a 5,000-year-old tomb were made from iron meteorites that fell to Earth from space, according to a new study. The beads, which are the oldest known iron artifacts in the world, were crafted roughly 2,000 years before Egypt's Iron Age.

In 1911, nine tube-shaped beads were excavated from an ancient cemetery near the village of el-Gerzeh, which is located about 3,100 miles (5,100 kilometers) south of Cairo, said study lead author Thilo Rehren, a professor at UCL Qatar, a Western Asian outpost of the University College London's Institute of Archaeology. The tomb dates back to approximately 3200 B.C., the researchers said.

Inside the tomb, which belonged to a teenage boy, the iron beads were strung together into a necklace alongside other exotic materials, including gold and gemstones. Early tests of the beads' composition revealed curiously high concentrations of nickel, a telltale signature of iron meteorites. [See Photos of the Egyptian Beads & Other Meteorite Jewels]

"Even 100 years ago, [the beads] attracted attention as being something strange," Rehren told LiveScience.

But without definitive proof of the beads' cosmic origins, questions persisted over whether similar amounts of nickel could be present in human-made iron. By scanning the iron beads with beams of neutrons and gamma rays, the researchers found high concentrations of cobalt, phosphorous and germanium; these elements were present at levels that only occur in iron meteorites.

"It's really exciting, because we were able to detect sufficient cobalt and germanium in these beads to confirm they're meteoritic," Rehren said. "We had assumed this was the case for 100 years, but it's nice to be able to put an exclamation mark on the label, rather than a question mark."

The X-ray technology also revealed that the beads had been hammered into thin sheets before being meticulously rolled into tubes.

"This meteoritic iron, it's very hard material that you find in lumps, and yet here we see it in thin beads," Rehren said. "The real question is, how were they made?"

Unlike softer and more pliable metals like gold and copper, working with solid iron required the invention of blacksmithing, which involves repeatedly heating metals to red-hot temperatures and hammering them into shape.

"It's a much more elaborate operation and one that we assumed was only invented and developed in the Iron Age, which started maybe 3,000 years ago — not 5,000 years ago," Rehren said.

The researchers suggest the iron meteorites were heated and hammered into thin sheets, and then woven around wooden sticks to create 0.8-inch-long (2 centimeters), tube-shaped beads. Other stones found in the same tomb displayed more traditional stone-working techniques, such as carving and drilling.

"This shows that these people, at this early age, were capable of blacksmithing," Rehren said. "It shows a pretty advanced skill with this difficult material. It might not have been on large scales, but by the time of the Iron Age, they had about 2,000 years of experience working with meteoritic iron."

This is not the first time beads from this Egyptian tomb have been linked to the cosmos. Earlier this year, in May, researchers at the Open University and University of Manchester published a paper in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science about the celestial origins of the ancient beads.

Other researchers have identified different artifacts that also have space origins. Last year, German scientists discovered a Buddha statue that was carved from a meteorite between the eighth and 10th centuries.

The detailed findings of the new study were published online Monday in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Emphasis mine on the bit about Blacksmithing. While they may not have had large chunks of the meteorite to work with, the fact that they could and did flatten it out and roll it up shows a lot of heat and skill went into these simple little (royal?) decorations.

[Zixinus]

Indeed and it shows how advanced a civilization they were.

I can't find a site that substantiates this, but something similar has been brought up in QI (a sort of semi-quiz and semi-comedy improve show): one of the North-American Indian tribes, one so isolated that they began to think that they were the only people on the world, had welcomed European explorers with iron utensils. They had no forges. How? In their area, they had three meteorites from which they took the iron. They even named the three rocks according to what they resembled ("sitting woman" was one of them, although I may be wrong). Of course, the explorers took hold of the meteorites or otherwise exploited them.
I tried looking for something like this in google, but so far I couldn't find it. Nor can I remember the QI episode from where this is from.

I did find this site which mentions that Egyptians did know iron from imports, as well as bronze and silver. So, they did probably had blacksmiths (or coppersmiths, your posts implies blacksmiths work with iron) that probably got the iron. Since the iron was already semi-smelted, they've probably gone "Oh, thank Messen! This thing is already pure! Now we just have to figure out how to turn it into jewelry."

[Broomstick]

I tried looking for something like this in google, but so far I couldn't find it. Nor can I remember the QI episode from where this is from.

Technically, it's not North American, it's Greenland. More specifically Savissivik on the Cape York peninsula, and the three fragments (which each weighed tons) were known as The Tent, The Woman, and The Dog. The location in Greenland rather than North America may have thrown off your google search.

The local Inuit used cold forging, basically they hammered the crap out of it to shape bits they managed to bash off the larger masses.

I did find this site which mentions that Egyptians did know iron from imports, as well as bronze and silver. So, they did probably had blacksmiths (or coppersmiths, your posts implies blacksmiths work with iron) that probably got the iron. Since the iron was already semi-smelted, they've probably gone "Oh, thank Messen! This thing is already pure! Now we just have to figure out how to turn it into jewelry."

Traditionally, "blacksmith" did mean an iron worker. Copper smiths used to be referred to as "redsmith" in English, but the term has largely fallen into disuse.

Other smiths are goldsmith, silversmith, and tinsmith. Apparently, metalworkers specialized fairly early.

[Spoonist]

The use of iron-rich hematite in toolmaking and also using native iron deposits in basalt predates this by several millenia. IIRC we have evidence of hematite tools from 30k BCE in "nubia". So cold-forging would have a long tradition and use. Not just with iron mind you but also with other stuff like bronze, copper and of course gold would have yielded a rich tradition of cold-forging although not as hard as iron-rich stuff.

I tried looking for something like this in google, but so far I couldn't find it. Nor can I remember the QI episode from where this is from.

Technically, it's not North American, it's Greenland. More specifically Savissivik on the Cape York peninsula, and the three fragments (which each weighed tons) were known as The Tent, The Woman, and The Dog. The location in Greenland rather than North America may have thrown off your google search.

The local Inuit used cold forging, basically they hammered the crap out of it to shape bits they managed to bash off the larger masses.

They also have one of the largest deposits of native iron.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disko_Island#Geology

Traditionally, "blacksmith" did mean an iron worker. Copper smiths used to be referred to as "redsmith" in English, but the term has largely fallen into disuse.

Other smiths are goldsmith, silversmith, and tinsmith. Apparently, metalworkers specialized fairly early.

Never seen it refered to as redsmith in historical documents, brown smith (copper+bronze) appears every now and then though. Is that some kind of americanism?
Goes checking... yupp, redsmith or red smith doesn't even register on ngrams.
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?co ... g=3&share=
Same thing when looking in genealogy lots of Brownsmith families but much much fewer redsmith ones (brits usually took family names of their occupation when it was required of them).
However here are some other, like the popular whitesmith which is an actual regular mention in medieval works, as well as later it seems...
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?co ... g=3&share=

But usually the specialization would show in the objects rather than the material.
Arrowsmith, swordsmith etc all the way to the semi-modern gunsmith. I think that a blacksmith would be a generalist, not a specialist and far down the guild lists when those came around.
I think the romans alone had 30-40 different smith names depending on what they did. Including the one who did the horse shoeing (faber ferramentarius IIRC?) to the one who did the spikes/hobnails for the shoes/sandals of the armies (don't remember the name).

[Borgholio]

Whitesmith was for tin, if I remember correctly.

[Thanas]

Wrong forum. Moved to correct one.

[LaCroix]

The problem with iron age was not the forging. Temperatures needed to make bronze (~1000C) are more than enough to forge iron in a yellow heat, which is about the hottest any blacksmith will ever take iron, unless he attempts a weld. Usually, iron would be worked at 900-950°C. This ability had been around since the beginning of copper age. So, the usage of meteoritic iron was never a problem, apart from scarcity, and thus, value. That's why you find it in the form of jewelry for kings, and not as tools.

The problem with entering iron age is the ability to produce iron, which means that you need the ability to continously hold a temperature of 1100- 1350C° (Depending of smelter design), which will allow the production of iron bloom out of ore and charcoal.

[Ahriman238]

Whitesmith was for tin, if I remember correctly.

I thought pewter. Not that it makes that much difference.

[Raw Shark]

Whitesmith was for tin, if I remember correctly.

I thought pewter. Not that it makes that much difference.

Both, plus lead, if I remember correctly.