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King Tut's Tektite - Part 1 of 4

Hi List!

Just read something interesting. It seems that a scarab found on a
pectoral amulet of Tutankhamun which they originally thought was
chalcedony turns out to be Libyan Desert Glass! -- Cool, huh?

The story is at : www.discovery.com/news/briefs/brief1.html

Hello Jeanne and List!

I'd like to comment on some details of this interesting article:

Discovery Channel Online, April 4, 1999 - King Tut Mystery Solved,
Excerpts: 

> Tut's scarab shows that some communication existed between the
> Western Desert and the Nile Valley during the pharaoh's short
> reign. It is known that between 2735 and 2195 B.C., Egyptians
> exploited gold and emerald mines in the mountains of the Eastern
> Desert, between the Nile and the Red Sea.

Of course, extensive communication existed between Libya and Ancient
Egypt. There were military conflicts (with Libyan prisoners as servants
in Egypt or as soldiers in the Egyptian armies), marriages, merchant
routes, and the pharaohs of the 22nd (945 - 712 B.C.) dynasty were in
fact of Libyan descent.

> But nobody would have imagined that desert
> silica glass would lie among the pharaoh's gems:

So, why shouldn't LDG have found its way into Egypt before, during, and
after the young pharaoh's short reign from 1334-1325 B.C. !?

> In order to set it at the center of the pectoral, the ancient
> Egyptians would have had to trek across 500 desert miles, half
> of them without any oasis.

No unsurmountable problem for merchants, soldiers, bedouins, and other
nomads in those days, I'd say. They surely had several military outposts
in the deserts - especially on the borders with neigboring states.

Of equal interest to the list will probably be the fact that the blade
of one of the daggers found in King Tut's tomb is of "meteoric" iron. It
was probably donated to King Tut by a Hittite ruler. The Hittites
already knew how to work iron, whereas the Egyptians didn't. 

The photo at the Discovery Channel site is of only modest quality, so I
am attaching a higher quality pic of it and of the dagger for Jeanne
personally (you will remember that we shouldn't post any pictures).
Unfortunately, I have a b&w scanner only. The color photo definitely
shows the typical light green color of most LDGs.

Best Easter wishes,

Bernd


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