Tutankhamun was buried with a dagger forged from a meteorite
When archaeologists opened Tutankhamun's tomb in 1924, they found two daggers: one with a golden blade and one of iron, a metal Egypt had no ore for. In 2016 x-ray analysis confirmed what many suspected: its blend of iron, nickel and cobalt matches a meteorite found nearby. The iron had literally fallen from the sky.
The Tutankhamun blade holds about 10 percent nickel and 0.6 percent cobalt, proportions shared with a meteorite from an ancient shower in the region. Since iron smelting only began around 1200 BC and Egypt lacked iron ore, the dagger was a rarity, and its placement suggests it was prized as highly as its golden twin. Egyptian daggers were usually copper or bronze, with gold reserved for royalty, and from about 3100 BC fine examples with golden hilts served as ceremonial objects.
Neolithic people made the first daggers from flint, ivory or bone. Copper versions arrived in the early Bronze Age, in the third millennium BC, and Minoan examples from 2400 to 2000 BC turned up at Knossos. One of the oldest smelted-iron objects known is a dagger with a gold handle from a Hattic royal tomb at Alaca Höyük in northern Anatolia, dated around 2500 BC and clearly treasured as an ornament.
Iberian smiths in what is now southern Spain and southwestern France forged outstanding iron blades between the fifth and third centuries BC, using unusually pure iron and cold hammering, with decoration showing Greek, Carthaginian and Phoenician influence. Their true dagger had a triangular blade. Hannibal's armies adopted Iberian weapons, and the Lusitanians of modern Portugal resisted Rome for years with light arms of the same pattern. Rome itself copied them: legionaries carried the pugio, a double-edged iron dagger with a blade of 18 to 30 centimetres that doubled as a handy utility knife, and the triangular Iberian type became the parazonium.
Over the last century or so the term has settled on a short, sharply tapered blade with a central spine, usually two full-length edges and a crossguard to stop the hand sliding forward. Older usage stretched wider, covering single-edged knives like the Afghan pesh-kabz and even the edgeless Renaissance stiletto. Many cultures used ornate daggers in ceremonies, and many countries now regulate owning or carrying them.
Source: Dagger
