King Tut’s Dagger Made of ‘Iron From the Sky,’ Researchers Say

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Townspeople and Treasure Hunters in Hungary Search for a Sultan’s Buried Heart

SZIGETVAR, Hungary — In the shade of a wiry cherry tree, 72-year-old Jozsef Kovacs was digging in the dry dirt with a large gardening shovel.

“We haven’t found a lot this morning, ” Mr. Kovacs said on a recent summer day, flashing a grin a few teeth short of a full smile. “But in October, we found a marble column.”

The column was a part of a 16th-century encampment that was unearthed last fall in Szigetvar, a poor city in southern Hungary, by a team of researchers from the University of Pecs.

The site is believed to be where Suleiman the Magnificent spent his last night before 50, 000 of his Ottoman soldiers sacked a nearby fortress defended by 2, 500 Christians led by Miklos Zrinyi, a local Croatian-Hungarian nobleman.

According to legend, it was the final triumph attributed to Suleiman, the great Ottoman sultan, who died in his tent on the eve of the battle in 1566.

His grand vizier kept the sultan’s death a secret from his soldiers until after their victory, when his body was secreted back to Istanbul. Ottoman legends say Suleiman’s heart and other internal organs were buried in a golden coffin beneath the place where his tent stood.

The discovery last year of the camp site, and other Ottoman relics, has led researchers to cut dozens of trenches at the excavation site in Szigetvar, about 20 miles from the Croatian border, and attracted treasure hunters in search of the buried heart of Suleiman the Magnificent.

“We wanted to cast some light on those legends and restore the fame of the city of Szigetvar, ” said Norbert Pap, the geographer and historian who has been leading the excavation.

Szigetvar could use the boost, however far back it might have to reach and however long it might take. The city of 10, 000 people filed for bankruptcy in 2010. Unemployment is almost 14 percent, and it is estimated to be even higher in some depressed parts of the city.

Mr. Pap and his team have employed a number of local laborers, like Mr. Kovacs, who are desperate for jobs and hope that the discovery of more Ottoman ruins could lead to a new wave of tourism.

Excavation of three plots of land clearly revealed the foundations of Suleiman’s lavish, 16th-century memorial site, encompassing a brick mosque, a Dervish cloister and the “turbe, ” or tomb, where the sultan’s entrails and heart are thought to have been interred.

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King Tut’s Dagger Made of ‘Iron From the Sky, ’ Researchers Say

CAIRO — The iron blade of an ornate dagger buried in Egypt with King Tutankhamen probably came from a fallen meteorite, researchers have determined — a form of metal so prized by ancient Egyptians that they called it “iron from the sky.”

The dagger, which was discovered in the folds of the wrapping around the mummified boy king, has long intrigued historians and archaeologists for its great beauty — it has a gold and crystal handle, and an ornate sheath — and because ironwork was rare in ancient Egypt.

Using X-ray fluorescence spectrometry, Italian and Egyptian experts found that the blade’s composition of iron, nickel and cobalt was an approximate match for a meteorite that landed in northern Egypt. The result “strongly suggests an extraterrestrial origin” for the blade, according to their results published this week in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science

The finding could add to secrets unlocked from an ancient tomb that is still a source of global fascination almost a century after its discovery by the English archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922. The dagger was found in 1925.

Earlier studies, in the 1970s and 1990s, examined whether the blade came from a meteorite but they were inconclusive or disputed. Newer technology allowed the Italian and Egyptian team, led by experts from Polytechnic University of Milan, the University of Pisa in Italy and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, to perform new tests that, they say, appear to settle the matter.

Comparing the composition of the dagger with meteorites that landed within a radius of 1, 250 miles, they found a close similarity with one that hit the seaport city of Marsa Matruh, 140 miles west of Alexandria, on the Mediterranean coast. That finding may help explain why, from the 13th century B.C., Egyptians started using a hieroglyph that translates as “iron from the sky, ” the paper said.