King Tut's personal dagger made from a meteorite.

When Howard Carter opened the sarcophagus of King Tutankhamun and unwrapped the mummy in 1925, three years after his discovery of the tomb, he found 107 objects placed in the linen bandages. One of them was an iron dagger with a gold handle elaborately decorated with cloisonné enamel, gold granulation in geometric patterns and a crystal pommel. Its sheath was made of gold with a lily motif engraved on one side and feathers terminating in a jackal head at the peak of the sheath on the other side. It was found on his right thigh.

Iron is very rare in Egyptian tombs. Bronze was the dominant metal in funerary artifacts until the Assyrian Occupation (656-639 B.C.), 600 years after iron production became widespread elsewhere around the Mediterranean. When iron has been found in a funerary context, archaeologists have suspected it was of extra-terrestrial origin. Since it falls from the sky, it would have been seen as a direct gift from the gods.

Now a new study by an international team of researchers has used state-of-the-art XRF technology to determine whether the iron in King Tutankhamun’s dagger is of meteoric origin. Their analysis found that the dagger’s blade is 11 wt% nickel, which can only be meteoritic iron. The amount of cobalt, .6 wt%, is also consistent with the ratio of nickel to cobalt found in iron meteorites.

So, the metal in the king's dagger fell down to him from the sky.  Couldn't be any better royal symbolism there.

Via The History Blog