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| Pectoral counterweight of Tutankhamen.
Image Desroches-Noblecourt 1963, Tutankhamen.
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The following article supports my negligible regard for the
quality of news research shown over at Ancient Origins. If the story seems familiar, it is because it
is.
It has made
headlines on at least two occasions in the past 20 years, plus two
documentaries were aired in the US
and Britain
in 2006. See references below.
I wrote a thesis on Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean
vitreous materials a few years ago, so this sort of lazy and irresponsible reporting irritates
me. Plus it is about an object from Tut's tomb (enter thesis number
two). I provide their text, my corrections and comments are italicised.
‘Tutankhamun’s Scarab Brooch
Confirmed as Born From a Direct Comet Hit’
(it is a
pectoral, a large pendant, or a counterweight for one, pharaohs did not pin
brooches to their blouses).
"The
fascinating story of the origins of a component in Tutankhamun’s scarab brooch (pectoral) has been furthered this
week. It has been established that some of the material found in that brooch
(aaargh) was result of a phenomenal
event that occurred 28 million years ago. The consequence of an
incomprehensibly ancient comet (c’mon, dinosaurs are waaay older) that had
come hurtling through the cosmos towards the earth created a component which
was subsequently used as the centerpiece of King Tut’s brooch (I’ll stop now). But there has been some
debate as to how exactly this event created the glass. Now scientists from Australia (A.
Cavosie) and Austria
(C. Koeberl, but they never cite them) think they (might) have the
evidence that provides an end to the argument."
Small but Significant
"The
findings at the tomb of Tutankhamun were numerous and a small artifact (are you kidding me? It is 14.9 x 14.5
cm, that is big for a pendant) such as a brooch might be over-shadowed by
the weightier items (it is photographed
in every damn book on Tut, and is in fact too flash to be overlooked or
overshadowed). But often times unassuming (famous) items have a deeper story than is at first evident. This
impressively preserved brooch!! has
such a deep history it could not be imagined (by you perhaps) and it came to light only through thorough research
from multiple disciplines (over the past
25 years)."
"The brooch contains
a striking yellow-brown scarab composed of a yellow silica glass stone (too many nouns ... glass contains
large quantities of silica, e.g. sand or quartz ... so say glass ffs ... I've never
heard of ʽglass stone’ .... these errors seem to stem from the copy paste media
releases in 2013 about the Kramers et al research paper) ... (Glass that was)
procured from (heating) the sand of
the Sahara (to very high temperatures) and then (this was) shaped and polished by some ancient Egyptian artisan. It
is this scarab that has perhaps the most interesting history of all" (anyone would think they were going to talk
about it, but no)."
Unlocking the Sands of
Time
"Chemical
analysis revealed that the silica glass (again
all glass contains silica) from this desert (not
the scarab, which has not been tested, the scarab glass was identified by
optical measurement in 1998) was originally formed 28 million years ago,
when a comet entered the earth's atmosphere above Egypt. The sand beneath it
was heated to a temperature of about 2,000 degrees Celsius and resulted in the
formation of a huge amount of the yellow silica glass (ffs all glass is ... blah blah blah) which lies scattered over a 6,000-square
kilometer area in the Sahara Desert (Western
or Libyan Desert, Egypt)."
"In 2017,
this silica glass (grrr) was one of
the clues that led Professor Jan Kramers of the University of Johannesburg,
South Africa, and colleagues to a remarkable discovery (wrong year: Kramers et al was published in 2013, they research is slightly earlier. ’Unique chemistry of a
diamond-bearing pebble from the Libyan Desert Glass strewnfield, SW Egypt: Evidence for a shocked comet fragment’ ... the
title says it all)."
"The other (remove ‘other’, because this was their study)
key find was a small black diamond-bearing pebble, which the researchers named ‘Hypatia’,
that had been found by an Egyptian geologist several years earlier (Aly Barakat in 1996). This gave
the clues needed to detect the cataclysmic event and the resulting composition
of the desert (composition of the
desert??? ... the event btw has been studied repeatedly since the 1970s). The
detection of tiny diamonds within the stone which are the result of extreme
pressure usually deep within the earth’s crust showed it to be remarkable. This
pebble was found on the surface and so the diamonds formed were the result of a
massive shock – an impact of some kind. The study team’s conclusions were that
the pebble represented the very first known specimen of a comet nucleus (rather than an ordinary meteorite) and
provided the first clear proof of a comet striking Earth millions of years ago (I want a citation for ‘the first known
specimen of a comet nucleus’)."
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| Libyan desert meteoric glass. Image from Science Alert. |
******
I am
stopping at approximately the point where my limited knowledge of astronomical theory
is not helpful to identifying errors or hyperbole, as there follows another few
paragraphs of misinterpreting the science of the two articles via garbled press
reports.
My only
observation would be, if this interests you, read the actual reports (or professional reviews of same, see
e.g. Hypatia’s Story below), as the accuracy of this article is pretty poor
for my area, Egyptology/archaeology, therefore the rest of their statements are potentially suspect. Oh, and Professor Jan Kramers is
male, he is referred to as female in this article.
This pithy
yet awful news item was authored by Joanna Gillan and April Holloway at clickbait site, Ancient Origins,
and basically illustrates how casual their approach is to their news stories,
even when they are not banging on about bigfoot, or little green men building
the pyramids, it appears they even struggle to interpret real news stories, without adding a generous dash of fairy dust.
The two author's writing style is
lurid and misrepresents the original paper. The scarab in this pendant was carved from naturally formed glass found lying on the desert surface. This glass was the outcome of a high temperature event that occured millions of years before Tutankhamen was born. They
over emphasise the celestial origin of the glass and the connection to
Tutankhamen in order to generate unnecessary excitement in their
audience (they are a woo site after all).
They
also clearly did not understand the topic.
Andrea Sinclair
P.S. The
current spate of reports claiming that the daggers of Tutankhamen also had this
meteoric glass are incorrect, the synthetic glass used as inlays to decorate the
two ceremonial daggers from the tomb is ancient Egyptian technology, aka furnace
produced industrial glass (see an article in Cairo Scene 16/05/19, for example).
For a general critique from me of the misrepresentation and hyperbole surrounding the origin of the meteoric iron of a dagger from Tut's tomb see "The Mitanni origin of a meteoric iron (blade) of a dagger of Tutankhamen" here
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| *facepalm* ...Image heading for an article from Express Uk. Both images are incorrect. |
Highlights from Western Desert meteoric glass research
M.R.
Kleindienst et al 2006. ‘Archaeological Investigations in Dakhleh Oasis,Western Desert, Egypt: Did a mereorite strike
Dakhleh during the Middle Stone Age occupations?’ Archaeology of Northeastern Africa,
Studies in African Archaeology 9.
World
Archaeology 2006. ‘In search of Desert Glass’: https://www.world-archaeology.com/world/africa/egypt/in-search-of-desert-glass.
National
Geographic Channel: 2006. ‘Ancient Asteroid! About the connection of the
counterweight to a meteor impact and the yellow desert glass’, featuring
Christian Koeberl.
BBC 2006.
(also a documentary) ‘Tut's gem hints at space impact’:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5196362.stm
G.R. Osinski et
al 2008. ‘The Dakhleh
Glass: Product of an impact airburst or cratering even in the Western Desert of
Egypt?’ Meteorics and Planetary
Science.
T. Aboud
2009. ‘Tut’s Desert Glass: has the enigma of its origin finally been solved?’ Science Direct.
J. Kramers
et al. 2013. ‘Unique chemistry of a diamond-bearing pebble from the Libyan
Desert Glass strewnfield, SW Egypt: Evidence
for a shocked comet fragment.’ Science
Direct. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X13004998
S.A. Hamouda and F.M. El Sharif 2013. ‘New
Interpretation for Desert Glass Formation.’ IJASS 1(4)
C. Stead
2013. ‘Hypatia’s Story: The Comet that struck Earth’.
https://ontherocksgeoblog.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/hypatias-story-the-comet-that-struck-earth/
D.
Bressan
Forbes 2018. ‘Gemstone found in king Tut’s tomb formed when a celestial
body
collided with earth’:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidbressan/2018/11/04/gemstone-found-in-king-tuts-tomb-formed-when-a-celestial-body-collided-with-earth/#7f2fe5bdedc6
A.J. Cavosie and C. Koeberi 2019. ‘Overestimation of threat from 100 Mt–class
airbursts? High-pressure evidence from zircon in Libyan Desert Glass.’ Geology.
https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article-abstract/570318/overestimation-of-threat-from-100-mt-class?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Curtin University press release 2019:
https://news.curtin.edu.au/media-releases/curtin-planetary-scientist-unravels-mystery-of-egyptian-desert-glass/