“And We also sent down iron in which there lies great force and which has many uses for mankind…” (Quran 57:25)

published in a book 1400 years old

Which in turn is over 1,200 years after a meteorite fall was described in the chronicle Ch'un-Ch'iu, traditionally considered to have been written by Confucius (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1994Metic..29..864Y ).

Or about nearly 2,000 years after "a new term for iron [was] developed [in Egyptian] which literally translates as ‘iron from the sky’." (http://www.ironfromthesky.org/?page_id=2 )

They found recently that Egyptians used metal from meteorites to make daggers for royalty.

https://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/02/africa/king-tut-dagger-me...

The CNN article doesn't seem to add any more detail than was already present in the Atlas Obscura article. Both cite the same paper, which is http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/maps.12664/full .

AO has a better picture of the dagger, and mentions that the other two iron items in Tutankhamun's tomb were also likely of meteoric origin, and different meteors at that. The CNN article has an annoying auto-play video.

Rampant, ignorant speculation:

Was the Ancient Egyptian term for sky related to words for "heaven" (the domain of the gods, and/or the place to which souls travelled after death)??

Seems that if it were there's many possibly etymologies. The page linked appears tentative about it, which seems reasonable. For example a Pharoah who wanted iron for themselves could declare it "of the heavens, and so only to be used by Pharoahs", which would make it "heavenly" to a people who associated sky and heaven. Or, perhaps chondrite was seen, as it is by me, as looking like a piece of the Milky Way fell down - association with "sky" but for unscientific reasons. Or ...

Rampant, ignorant answer.

I used Google Scholar to search for "iron from the sky", and read the documents which were free to read.

None answer your question directly. I got the impression that "heaven" was where the gods live. The http://www.ironfromthesky.org/?page_id=2 link I gave earlier says:

> They contain references to iron in numerous places, mainly featuring in funerary ceremonies, the reception of deceased kings to heaven and their subsequent life in heaven, as well as a specific association with the god Seth ... These dark, heavy, fossilised bones share strong visual similarity with desert-weathered iron meteorites; as such, they could be the source of inspiration for the Pyramid texts reference to the ‘iron bones of gods’.

I did not get a sense that it was restricted to a Pharaoh. The Atlas Obscura piece pointed out that the price of iron was 10x that of gold, so it had a price. It was also a burial good in graves other than that of a Pharoah. (Rich people, certainly.)

I also found https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/2397122/Vale... which talks about the Hittite phrases "They brought <<black iron>> of the sky from the sky" and "They brought iron from the sky", where "<<black iron>>" is the placeholder for Sumerogram AN.BAR GE, and is traditionally is interpreted as meteoric iron.

Since the Hittites were not Egyptian, and had a different religion, I don't think they would have picked up that word on the say-so of a Pharaoh. It's also different than the Egyptian word for "iron from the sky". Unfortunately, I can't find the page with that word; I just remember it begins with a "B".

No one mentioned chondrite. I see that the Camp Verde meteorite (coarse octahedrite) and the Winona meteorite (primitive achondrite) are two meteorites which have appeared in an archeological context.

> Other meteors have been located in ancient ruins of the Americas, as well as around the world, ranging in size from the three ounce Pojoaque meteorite, found in an ancient pottery bowl near Santa Fe, N.M., to the 3,407-pound Casas Grandes iron discovered in an Inca ruin near Chihuahua, Mexico. - https://web.archive.org/web/20110901053938/http://verdenews....

The Pojoaque meteorite is a pallasite.

None of these four are (if I understand correctly) chondrites. Given that chondrites are the most common meteorite, this suggests that they were not as significant in ancient cultures.

Thanks for sharing your delving in to the sources.

FWIW the chondrite thing v was just 'meteoric iron that looks to me a bit like stars/milky way'.

Chondrite meteorites are stony, that is, non-metallic. I don't think they would be considered 'meteoric iron'.

people already knew how to smelt iron by that time.

Reminds me of Conan the Barbarian and their starmetal weapons.