[meteorite-list] Carved Glass Beetle in King Tut's Necklace a Tektite?

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Jun 26 00:27:37 2006
Message-ID: <200606260421.VAA02511_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2242001,00.html

King Tut's glass beetle came from outer space
Will Iredale
The Sunday Times (United Kingdom)
June 25, 2006

SCIENTISTS believe they have solved the mystery surrounding a piece of
rare natural glass at the centre of an elaborate necklace found among
the treasures of Tutankhamun, the boy pharaoh.

They think a fragile meteorite broke up as it entered the atmosphere,
producing a fireball with temperatures over 1,800C that turned the
desert sand and rock into molten lava which became glass when it cooled.

Experts have puzzled over the origin of the yellow-green glass - carved
into the shape of a scarab beetle - since it was excavated in 1922 from
the tomb of the teenage king, who died about 1323BC. It is generally
agreed that it came from an area called the Great Sand Sea but there has
been uncertainty over how it was formed because there is no crater to
back up the idea of a meteorite strike.

Now it is thought that the meteorite responsible was not intact but made
up of loose rubble.

"A fireball moving quicker than a hurricane force would have meant a
blast of air so hot it could melt all the sand and sandstone on the
ground," said Mark Boslough, an expert on impact physics based at the
Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico.

He recreated the effect on his computer and found that an object about
390ft in diameter and travelling at 12.4 miles a second would indeed
produce enough heat to melt sand and create glass without leaving a
crater as it broke up in the atmosphere.

The theory forms the basis of a BBC2 television programme, King Tut's
Fireball, to be shown next month.

"It would have become a molten lake of bubbling liquid sand and as the
sand cooled it would have formed glass which ended up in King
Tutankhamun's jewellery," said Boslough.

The necklace holding the 1in oval glass piece is housed in the Egyptian
Museum in Cairo. It was one of hundreds of items discovered by the
British archeologist Howard Carter in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings
in Luxor.

In his diary Carter described the brightly coloured gem as "greenish
yellow chalcedony". However, in 1999 Italian geologists tested the
chemical composition of the scarab and concluded it was not chalcedony
but natural desert glass, which is found only in the Great Sand Sea 500
miles southwest of Cairo.

Many meteorite craters can be seen only from space, so satellite
photography experts examined the area. Farouk El-Baz, director of the
centre for remote sensing at Boston University said: "If this glass is
of meteoric origin then there should be a crater of that age. But we did
not find a smoking gun for silica (glass) there."

Chunks of glass were discovered in 1932 by Patrick Clayton, a British
surveyor operating in the desert with the Egyptian Geological Survey.
"He ran into this funny area with this glistening stuff all over the
place," said his son Peter this weekend.

Next year an exhibition will be held in London showing for the first
time many of the pieces found by Carter.
Received on Mon 26 Jun 2006 12:21:30 AM PDT