The sky is an enormous iron container filled with water and chunks of it occasionally fall off and plummet to Earth as iron meteorites. Or, at least, that鈥檚 what ancient Egyptians seem to have thought.
Iron is a relatively common element on Earth but it was largely inaccessible to early civilisations because it is locked away in ores that require smelting. This may have made the metal seem mystifying to ancient people, says M. Victoria Almansa-Villatoro at Brown University, Rhode Island.
The metal鈥檚 habit of falling from the sky probably added to its mystique. Although iron meteorites are rare, ancient people took advantage of them to make iron objects. , and the material was also used in , and . 鈥淚t is generally accepted that most pre-Iron Age iron was meteoritic,鈥� says Almansa-Villatoro.
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Some researchers assume it was only about 3300 years ago that Egyptians realised this iron came from the heavens. At that time a new hieroglyphic word came into use that translates as 鈥溾��. But Almansa-Villatoro thinks the link may have been made much earlier.
She examined hieroglyphic records including the 4300-year-old , the world鈥檚 oldest religious documents, which were carved inside several pyramids to guide the dead king or queen to the afterlife. The documents contain several references to celestial iron: the dead monarch is instructed to enter the sky through its iron doors, for instance, and the Egyptian heavenly paradise 鈥� the Field of Reeds 鈥� is described as being surrounded by a wall of iron.
There are also references to the dead royal becoming clean 鈥渋n the cold water of the stars鈥� once he or she has entered the sky, and of sailing through the ocean of the sky in a boat.
Taken together, Almansa-Villatoro says this suggests the Egyptians saw the sky as a huge pool of water contained within an iron vessel. She argues they reached this conclusion after seeing meteorites falling from the sky, which they might have interpreted as chunks of the iron container that had crumbled off.
Although we don鈥檛 have solid evidence that the Egyptians saw iron meteorites falling from the sky 4300 years ago, Almansa-Villatoro points out that the Pyramid Texts describe iron as belonging to Seth, the god of thunderstorms, which might be significant.
鈥淚ron meteorites have a much higher density [than other meteorites], and much more 鈥榦omph鈥� upon impact,鈥� says Thilo Rehren at the Cyprus Institute, meaning they streak through the sky and hit the ground with a lightning-like flash of light and a thunder-like roar. In other words, if Egyptians were linking iron with Seth 4300 years ago, there鈥檚 a good chance they had seen iron meteorites fall from the sky.
Rehren also points out we now have geological evidence that . 鈥淚f fragments of metal fall from the sky, and you鈥檙e a follower of the 鈥榖owl of water鈥� school of thought, then it鈥檚 not unreasonable to assume that the bowl is made of iron,鈥� he says.
This celestial iron tub conclusion was probably reached even before the Pyramid Texts were written. Almansa-Villatoro points out that an Egyptian hieroglyph in use more than 5000 years ago, before the first pharaoh rose to power, has a strange triple meaning: metal, birth and water. 鈥淭his association has definitely puzzled scholars,鈥� she says, but all three definitions are central to the idea of the sky as a water-filled iron tub that must be crossed to be reborn in the afterlife.
Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
