Meteoric Iron in Ancient Egyptian and Chinese Cultures, from Pyramids to Circumpolar Stars

Abstract

Before the Iron Age, that is before the advent of iron smelting, the main source of the metal was meteoric iron. Here we propose a discussion about the use of this iron to make artifacts by people of ancient Egypt and China. For Egypt, we will report as the meteoric iron appeared, according to the British writer Alan Alford, in the Pyramid Texts. It is also told that of iron was made one of the ritual tools used during the “opening of the mouth ceremony”, an ancient Egyptian ritual described in funerary texts. One of the shapes of this tool resembled the asterism of the circumpolar stars of the Big Dipper. The iron of Tutankhamun’s dagger and of the Kamil Crater will be discussed too. Then, we will consider China, where meteoric iron was forged onto the blades of bronze weapons. We will discuss also the Hongshan Culture, famous for its jade artifacts. Modern artifacts, defined as Hongshan iron meteorites, show asterisms (the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia) carved on them, but the literature that we will mention here, about this Chinese neolithic culture, is not stressing any use of meteorites. In any case, it is true that the Nine Stars of the Big Dipper have been represented by Neolithic China. For what concerns the meteorites, as in the ancient Egypt, people of China considered the heavens as the source of meteoric iron.

Keywords: Pyramid Texts, Meteoric iron, Egypt, China