The Cultural Indexicality of the N41 Sign for bjȝ : The Metal of the Sky and the Sky of Metal

Abstract

This article explores the cultural implications of the sign N41 used in an apparently random constellation of words related to women, water and metals. The symbolic meaning of iron and its consistent relation with the sky in religious texts is explored to determine that the Egyptian cosmovision contemplated the sky as an iron container of water, pieces of which fell to the earth in the shape of meteors and were used to produce ritual objects. The indexicality of the N41 sign suggests that the relation between birth, afterlife, and iron existed even before the first attested long religious texts in Egypt. Finally, the lexical parallels between Egypt and Mesopotamia can be explained as a common reaction to the phenomena of falling iron meteorites.

Keywords

Gender iron metal meteors pyramid semiotics sky Sumerian texts womb

Introduction

The Iron Age is commonly defined as the chronological period in the ancient world when iron production became widespread and complex metallurgical techniques arose, starting from the end of the second millennium bc in the Near East. However, meteoritic iron was used much earlier in several ancient cultures.¹

The earliest archaeological evidence of iron in Mesopotamia was found in Samarra dating to the sixth millennium bc.² The third millennium bc findings include an artifact discovered at the Royal Cemetery of Ur which is made of meteoritic iron,³ as well as a dagger blade from Tell Asmar,⁴ which is one of the earliest attestations of non-meteoritic iron in the Near East. Other third millennium iron objects come from Uruk, Khafajah, Kiš, Mari and Chagar Bazar. While the artifact from Uruk has a meteoritic origin, the material from Chagar Bazar is completely lacking in nickel, and hence has been identified as terrestrial iron.⁵ However, more recent research has proved the unreliability of using nickel content as the only criterion to recognize meteoritic iron.⁶ Just as an iron lump that was previously thought to be meteoritic from Agia Triada in Crete has been shown to be corundum,⁷ all these objects might need to be re-examined.

In his article on the difference between meteoritic iron and smelted nickel-rich iron, Photos states that early nickel-rich meteoritic iron artifacts have not yet been found in the eastern Mediterranean, as opposed to China.⁸ However, at the time his work was published, the most recent studies on the iron tube-shaped beads from the prehistoric cemetery of Gerzeh⁹ and Tutankhamon’s dagger¹⁰ had not been carried out. Both materials come from Egypt, and both are made of meteoritic iron.

More recently, Diane Johnson has collected the evidence for iron in Egypt from the Predynastic age to the Eighteenth Dynasty.¹¹ As can be appreciated there, most iron artifacts come from wealthy tombs and contexts, attesting to their use as luxury or ceremonial items, not intended to be daily objects but as specialist tools likely produced in Mitanni or Kizzuwatna.¹² In Egypt, iron was also related to the ritual of the Opening of the Mouth in a twofold way: through the material of the netjeriu blades, and through the chief performer of this ritual, the wn-r. In fact, the “opener of the mouth” priest lived in Letopolis, a city represented by a thunderbolt, an atmospheric phenomenon sometimes indistinguishable from the falling of meteorites in the ancient world.¹³

The archaeological evidence alone does not suffice to analyze the ancient Egyptian significance of a metal which was objectively rare before the Iron Age. Indeed, the study of religious and literary texts enormously contributes to the general picture, but an even more promising path is etymology. Previous work on this respect have mainly focused on the linguistic lexeme for ‘iron’,¹⁴ and a semiotic approach to the sign N41 , which takes cultural cues into consideration, is virtually inexistent. A sign is perceived as an object by a receptor through the triggering of specific senses or memories that are socially and culturally embedded.¹⁵ The sign N41 is used in an apparently random constellation of words related to metals, women and water, and the following discussion will argue that the indexical connection between these parameters is the religious position of iron.

Finally, the similarities between Egyptian and Sumerian lexemes for iron pose the question whether terminology can travel along with indexicals to distant places, or rather different cultures have independent simultaneous reactions when influenced by similar conditions.

The word for iron in Ancient Egyptian

The Egyptian lexeme for ‘iron’ is bjȝ n pt, or benipe in Coptic. The expression appears for the first time in the Nineteenth Dynasty to denote iron, and the construction is an indirect genitive formed by two nouns: bjȝ and pt. While the latter is well known to mean sky, the former has long been discussed. The word bjȝ, after Wainwright, had the basic meaning of ‘iron’ but could also refer to meteoritic material in general, iron, stone, or a conglomerate of the two, based on a substitution of the word by bjȝ n pt in successive periods, as well as the star determinative that often accompanies the word bjȝ.¹⁶ In later periods an unclear but precious iron ore was defined under the word bḳs which apparently came from an original bjȝ n ḳsy ‘bjȝ of Cusae’.¹⁷ During the Old Kingdom, bjȝ refers essentially to ‘iron’; even if a ‘copper’ meaning cannot be completely ruled out, it is clear that the references of bjȝ and the sky in the Pyramid Texts are to be translated exclusively as ‘iron’.¹⁸

Apart from iron and meteoritic materials, bjȝ also had an association with the sky,¹⁹ and with the sky as an ocean that must be ferried across.²⁰ Wainwright noted the relation between the water that falls from the sky as rain, and the blue color of the celestial vault, and thus he argued that it was reasonable to use for bjȝ the ideogram N41,²¹ which represents a well full of water.²² Since water was sent out to the earth from the sky, and the sky’s color mirrors that of water, the early Egyptian cosmovision could have contemplated a sky that was made of or contained water. But the use of N41 indexes iron as well, and following this line of thought, it should be equally possible to argue that the sky contained iron. A passage from the Pyramid Texts can be quite revealing for this issue:

(1) jṯ NN pt pšn.f bjȝ.s

Unis acquires the sky and splits its bjȝ (PT 257)

It cannot be doubted that the suffix pronoun after bjȝ refers to pt, and thus iron is described as belonging to the sky. Indeed, it is not an isolated reference since all bjȝ-elements in the cosmology of the Pyramid Texts appear in connection with the sky:

Cords of bjȝ to go up to the sky (PT 214; PT *711²³)

bjȝ bones of the king equated to the Imperishable Stars (PT 325; PT 570; PT 684; PT *714²⁴)

bjȝ chair (PT 712; PT 413; PT 424; PT 437; PT 459; PT 461; PT 483; PT 509; PT 512; PT 536; PT 553; PT 557; PT 582; PT 610; PT 612; PT 665D; PT 666; PT 673; PT 674; PT 676; PT 689; PT 537; PT *731, PT *732, PT *755; PT *760; PT *793)

bjȝ limbs of the king (PT 419)

bjȝ doors of the sky (PT 469; PT 584)

bjȝ in the prow of Sokar-boat (PT 669; PT *757)

(2) wʿb.k jr.k m ḳbḥw sbȝw

hȝ.k ḥr nwḥw bjȝ ḥr rmnwj ḥrw m rn.f jmj ḥnw

kjw n.k ḥnmmt wṯz.n kw j.ḫmw-sk

You may become clean in the Cold Waters of the stars, so that you may descend on the cords of iron and on the shoulders of Horus in his identity of the One who is in the Sokar Boat. And humanity will bow to you after the Imperishable Stars have raised you (PT 214).

This fragment may seem contradictory at first glance, since the pharaoh is ‘descending’ on the cords, and not climbing them, but such action would make sense if he is going down on the cords to go from the stars to the shoulders of Horus. Interestingly, Horus is transporting the king ‘in his identity of the One who is in the Sokar Boat’, and the prow of the Sokar boat is made of iron. Sokar is a deity related to comets and meteors,²⁵ but also to metalworking and smelting from the Old Kingdom until the New Kingdom.²⁶ In the Pyramid Texts, Sokar’s role is to transport in his boat the dead king to the sky, while in the Coffin Texts, Sokar’s function is to transfigure the dead king through the Opening of the Mouth ritual. Therefore, the Pyramid Texts picture an iron boat with a metalworking god, Sokar, transporting the dead king to his final heavenly destination, and the Coffin Texts place iron tools on the hands of the same god as performer in a ritual of revivification.

The passage quoted earlier ends with a reference to the Imperishable Stars that raise the dead king. The Imperishable Stars are equated to the iron bones of the pharaoh in several passages of the Pyramid Texts:²⁷

(3) wʿb jr NN šzp.f n.f ksw.f bjȝw

ȝw.f n.f ʿwt.f j.ḫmt.skj jmt ḥt mjwt.f nwt

NN becomes pure, and he receives for himself his bones of iron, and extends for himself his imperishable limbs that are in the belly of his mother Nut (PT 325).

(4) mdw.n NN kȝ.f jr pt

ḳsw NN bjȝw ʿwt NN m sbȝw j.ḫmw-sk

NN has claimed his ka to the sky. The iron bones of NN and the limbs of NN are the Imperishable Stars (PT 684).

The king, therefore, traverses the sky in a boat with an iron prow, is raised by the iron Imperishable Stars, and he is even a star himself²⁸ who traverses the sky. As Aufrère notices, according to a late tradition, Seth’s bones were made of iron, and even Ramses II claims that feature for himself as he identifies himself with Seth.²⁹

The references to the iron doors of the sky are especially interesting, as they specify that at least the entrance of the sky is made of that metal.

(5) szn.t ʿȝwj bjȝ jmj sḥdw n NN pn

The iron door in the starry sky is pulled open for this NN (PT 469; PT 584).

The verb used with the iron door is jzn, zn or szn meaning ‘pull open’ as opposed to wn ‘open’ for which the Ba-Ka door is the passive subject in the same passage. zn is a verb etymologically related to znj ‘to cut off’ (Wb 3, 457.16–21) and ‘to separate’ (Wb 3 454.14–456.13), which puts more stress on the active act of breaking and splitting something open. Other Pyramid Texts passages state the necessity for the king to break the iron:³⁰

(6) sḏ.f bjȝ pšn.n.f swḥt

And he will break the iron after he has split the egg (PT *757).

(7) swt sḏ.f s[wḥt wḥʿ].f bjȝ

He (Sokar on behalf of the king) is the one who will break [his egg] and [split]³¹ his iron (PT 669).

More clarifying is the following example from the Coffin Texts:

(8) jw rḫ.k sḫt jȝrw tw nt rʿ

jw jnb nty ḥȝ.s m bjȝ

I know the Field of Reeds of Ra, the wall that goes around it is of iron (CT 159).

Even though the geographical location of the Field of Reeds during the Middle Kingdom is a matter of discussion,³² its association with the sky has been clear since the Old Kingdom.³³ It appears that in order to enter certain parts of the sky, an iron boundary needs to be broken.³⁴ In this context, the passage previously cited – ‘Unis seizes the sky and splits its bjȝ’ (PT 257) – makes perfect sense. The egg referred to is the primeval egg from which the chaos that created the world arose,³⁵ here probably associated with Nut, the goddess of the sky, whose name was sometimes spelled with the determinative of an egg.³⁶

The word bjȝ referring to some watery surface of the sky that can be sailed has been discussed earlier in this article. Textual evidence for this word used in private and royal inscriptions (cf. note 21) is not scarce. A distinction has been made between this word and ḳbḥw, the latter being translated as ‘fresh water’, and the former as ‘basin’,³⁷ or simply ‘the waters of the sky’.³⁸ However, it is unlikely that bjȝ describes the water itself, which was not made of metal, and it rather refers to the place that contains the fluid. The three occurrences of this word in the Pyramid Texts argue for this interpretation:

(9) dm.n.f bjȝ m ȝḫj.f

He has penetrated the bjȝ with his Akh (PT 667A).

(10) zȝȝ tw ḫns bjȝ

The canal of bjȝ guards you (PT *764).

(11) pr.j r.j jr pt ḏȝj.j bjȝ nmj(.j) ḥzȝw

I go up to the sky, I cross the bjȝ and travel the Hezau canal (PT 509).

The verb used in the first example is dm, meaning ‘pierce’ or ‘penetrate’ (Wb V, 449.1–7), which cannot be used with ‘water’ as an object. The term ḫns here, probably meaning ‘canal’, belongs to the bjȝ so it is likely that is a canal inside it. Finally, dȝj is a verb used in the Pyramid Texts with place names such as Nut, Kenemut, or Akhet as direct objects, never ‘water’.

There is a plethora of allusions in the Pyramid Texts to certain places in the sky that need to be filled in order to have the king sailing them.³⁹ This water must thus be contained in a circumscribed area, and after having stated that the sky is surrounded by iron, it can be inferred that this metal was the material of the water container itself. The nature of the heavenly vessel will now be discussed.

Watkins relates the Luwian sign for ‘sky’, CAELUM , probably representing a metal bowl from which Anatolian examples in silver are known, to an exemplum of the myth of Dawn and Tithonus in a Sapphic papyrus that reads, ‘Dawn, for love, went up into the bowl’. The bowl thus would be a reference to the sky both in second millennium Anatolia and first millennium Greece.⁴⁰ Watkins mentions the relief 28/29 of the Chamber A in the rock sanctuary of Yazilikaya, where two bulls standing on the earth support the sky as a great starry bowl.⁴¹

As far as Old Kingdom Egypt is concerned, if it is supposed that bjȝ does not represent the nature of what is navigated, namely the water, but rather its container, which was made of iron, could the determinative of bjȝ provide a graphic explanation of it? The Gardiner sign N 41 is said to represent a well full of water.⁴² It is used as a determinative of words related with water such as ẖnmt ‘watering place’ (Wb III, 382. 10–15); words related with women and birth such as jdt ‘uterus’ (Wb III, 76.1–3); and finally, the sign is widely associated with metals, as has been stated. These apparently unrelated semantic uses of the sign can be explained if it is accepted that the Egyptians saw the sky as an iron container of water, associated with the goddess of the sky, Nut, who is one of the creator deities in the Heliopolitan Cosmogony and mother of the sun and all stars, which entered her mouth and emerged from her womb every day.⁴³ The name of Nut is spelled using the nw-jar, which was her common symbol (W 24), sometimes with an egg (H 8) as determinative, also used in words related to women and birth. Earlier in this article I introduced the Pyramid Texts’ concept of the Primeval Egg made out of iron which needs to be broken, and it can be linked now to the iron Nut/sky’s womb containing the waters of the sky in the shape of a bowl or a jar.⁴⁴ Indeed, breaking the egg means reversing the natural order of birth and death, and thus going from death to rebirth, which could be seen as a metaphor for resurrection inside the womb-sky.⁴⁵ On the other hand, the division of two parts takes cosmological concepts referring back to the separation of sky and earth.⁴⁶ Finally, a split egg takes an oval shape that can be associated with a bowl or container, and resembles the N 41 sign. Indeed, ostrich eggs used as containers are found in Late Predynastic tombs in Egypt,⁴⁷ and N 41 is a sign attested since the Early Dynastic.⁴⁸

This explanation of the N41 sign is important because it implies that the connections between the sky, waters, women, fertility⁴⁹ and iron, were existent and well consolidated even before the earliest attestations of long religious texts in Egypt.⁵⁰ The association between egg and container of the waters of the sky (bjȝ) is made clear in Coffin Texts examples:

(12) j rʿ jm swḥt.f wbn m jtn.f

psḏ m ȝḫt.f nbb ḥr bjȝ.f

Oh Ra in his egg, who rises in his disk, who shines in his Akhet, who swims in his bjȝ (CT 335)

(13) [jnk] wḏʿ bjȝ pẖr.j ḥȝ swḥt

I am the one who divides the bjȝ, going around the egg (CT 223)

Thus, the sky contained both water and iron.⁵¹ Pieces of this iron of the sky could rarely fall to the earth as meteorites.⁵² However, Meeks doubts the fact that the Egyptians recognized the link between meteors and iron.⁵³ He cites the example of the army of Thutmosis III, who saw a star flying from south to north (Urk. IV, 1238, 10–13), and the tales of falling stars that create destruction, and argues that Egyptians confused both phenomena (lightning trail of the meteorite and the electrometeors that resembled falling stars) with thunderbolts, and grouped them all under the term of sšd. Even if that is the case, the link between meteors and iron is still valid given the recurrent association between bjȝ and the thunderstorm god Seth. Considering that the main source of iron in Egypt during the third millennium was meteoritic, the evidence strongly suggests that the bjȝ that recurrently appears associated with the sky in the Pyramid Texts is to be translated as ‘iron’.

Furthermore, the Pyramid Texts sentence, ‘Osiris: with the iron that came from Seth, the iron striker that parted the mouth of the gods’ (PT 21), is a clear reference to the tools made of iron used in the Opening of the Mouth ritual. Additionally, the fact that bjȝ pr m stẖ more properly means ‘the iron came from Seth’⁵⁴ is a further connection between iron and comets-thunderbolts. The foregoing discussion shows that it was at least since the Old Kingdom that the Egyptians were aware of the fact that iron was released from the sky, perhaps sometimes after a thunderstorm. In fact, iron was closely associated with Seth, whose bones were made of iron, and whose spear with which he would kill the serpent Apophis was made of iron.⁵⁵

The word for iron, bjȝ n pt, thus means ‘the iron of the sky’, ‘the meteoritic material of the sky’, or even just ‘the metal of the sky’. An analogy with the Sumerian terms ku³-an and maybe even an-na for iron is appealing. The fact has already been noticed in the past,⁵⁶ and has been exhaustively contested by Bjorkman arguing that AN-BAR does not mean anything of the likeness of ‘the metal of the sky’.⁵⁷ In Sumerian, three words were used to describe iron: an-na,⁵⁸ an-bar⁵⁹ and ku₃-an.⁶⁰ As can be observed, all three words share the common feature AN, and this sign alone can be used as an abbreviated form to describe iron.⁶¹ The sign AN in Sumerian lists of metals goes back to texts dated to the Uruk III period,⁶² and well-established meanings of the sign are ‘sky’, ‘heaven’, or the sky-god An.⁶³ In spite of the scholarly disagreement around the reading and etymology of these lexemes, it is worth noting that the adaptation of the Luwian word *parzil(i) for ‘iron’ in logographic Sumerian implied the addition of the sign AN, and that ku₃-an, which certainly means a specific prestigious variety of ‘iron’ in some cases,⁶⁴ is written with the same sign.

It is therefore necessary to inquire whether this is a case of shared lexical meaning conveyed through contact, or whether the similarities are the result of a common cultural response to the falling of a valuable metal from the sky. In fact, the earliest attestation of the word in Sumer dates to the Uruk III period. However, despite the presence of a stone vessel of the Second Dynasty king Khasekhemuy in Byblos, and the Levantine products in Naqada III Maadi,⁶⁵ scholars have not reached an agreement concerning the existence of continued contacts pre-dating the beginning of the third millennium.⁶⁶ The situation in this specific case is particularly complex, because external influence would imply the borrowing of cultural cues and associated indexicality. The great extent to which the Egyptian lexeme for ‘iron’ is culturally embedded has been demonstrated through the previous examination of the iconicity of the N41 sign, and the position of iron in religious texts. The indexicality of the N41 sign, and the concept of heavenly iron is, therefore, most likely native in Egypt.

The Sumerian parallels for the lexemes of ‘iron’ however, are not isolated cases, since the Egyptian word for silver is ḥḏ, which means also ‘white’ and ‘shiny/bright’. The Sumerian word for silver is ku₃-babbar, ku₃/kug or ku₃(g) meaning ‘metal’ and babbar, ‘white’ and ‘shiny’. Instead of cultural influence, I argue that the parallels could be due to a natural reaction to the observation of and interaction with the environment.

Metal falling from the sky: Light, power and destruction

In the Egyptian archaeological record, iron was the material associated with the tools used for the Opening of the Mouth.⁶⁷ Additionally, headrests in iron and haematite were very common in the Late Period, pointing to an association between the materiality of these objects and the sky,⁶⁸ and the belief that a headrest made from a celestial material could raise the deceased’s head to the sky.⁶⁹ On a similar note, weapons and cultic objects were usually made of iron since the Old Hittite Period in Anatolia.⁷⁰

It has already been mentioned that in Egyptian religious texts the sky had a number of fields and canals. Fields were related to fertility,⁷¹ and so were the waters that were contained in the womb of the sky. In this context, the deceased’s desire to return to that womb in the afterlife to be reborn there could easily be explained, as well as the need for celestial objects to facilitate his ascension.⁷²

The Akkadian word used for meteors is the same as ‘star’, kakkabu. When it means ‘meteor’, it very often appears with the verbs sarāru ‘flash’ and maqātu ‘fall’.⁷³ A collection of occurrences of meteors and different kinds of fireballs in cuneiform texts were collected by Bjorkman. They were seen as messages from the gods and could thus be interpreted, ‘if a fireball during daylight, in the afternoon, from west to east flashes and disappears (on the horizon): attack of the enemy army against the land; the enemy will devour the land’.⁷⁴

An interesting example from Egypt is to be found in the Middle Egyptian tale The Shipwrecked Sailor. The snake tells its story to the castaway, and it describes the catastrophic end its family had to face with the words ʿḥʿ.n sbȝ hȝw pr.n nȝ m ḫt m-ʿ.f ‘Then a star came down and those went up in fire from it’ (l. 129–30). The word used is sbȝ, the same as ‘star’, accompanied by the verb hȝ, literally meaning ‘descend’ or ‘go down’. Therefore, this is another example of the use of the same words to describe a concrete phenomenon in two different languages: kakkabu maqātu and sbȝ hȝ ‘star’ and ‘go down’. This cannot be explained through contact, but rather as the natural reaction to a peculiar atmospheric phenomenon.

This association between light, divine power and destruction is not exclusive to the ancient Near Eastern civilizations, but is rather cross-cultural and recurrent across the millennia. Wainwright has excellently noted this particular anthropological response and gathered different examples: ‘Iron is the product of thunderbolts (meteorites), and has been called by various peoples “lightning-iron,” “lightning-natured,” “raw iron from lightning”. It has been thought to originate in the striking of a stone by lightning, and is used as a symbol of the thunder and lightning deity.’⁷⁵

The evidence gathered in this article proves that Egyptians recognized the association between iron, meteorites, and the sky at least since the Old Kingdom. Sumerian textual attestations seem to suggest that people in Mesopotamia were aware of the same connection since the beginning of the third millennium, but the indexicality of the Egyptian N41 sign, and its relation to words in the semantic spectrum of metals, water, and sky, indicates that the Egyptians integrated this knowledge in a constellation of mythopoeic thought since an undetermined Predynastic time. Therefore, cultural influence is plausible, but it is by no means the only possible interpretation, and it is not the approach adopted in this article.

Even if both cultures coincide in the basic premise of the association between iron and sky, the symbolism of the metal took different paths in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Iron became well integrated in the cosmological and funerary conceptions of birth and regeneration in ancient Egypt, with evidence found in material culture, texts and lexicon. This aspect, to my knowledge, was not adopted in the Near East, and thus points to the natural development of two originally distinct ideas arisen as a consequence of the observation of sky and earth.

Conclusions

The Pyramid and Coffin Texts’ evidence, as well as some instances from later texts, consistently presents the sky as containing iron. This article argues that the Egyptian cosmovision pictures the sky as an iron container of water with the shape of a bowl or an egg, and metaphorically related to the goddess Nut and her womb. This mental association is the necessary indexicality of the N41 sign, and explains its apparently random use for words related to water, women and metals, such as ‘well’, ‘uterus’, and ‘iron’. The relation of iron and sky is concretized in the production of iron objects with funerary usages in Egypt, which would allow the deceased to ascend to the sky and be reborn in Nut’s womb.

The Egyptian phrase bjȝ n pt as ‘iron of the sky’ resembles the Sumerian term ku₃-an, and this relationship could be explained as a common response in both civilizations to a rare but fascinating meteorological phenomenon. Indeed, the relation between iron, meteors, lightning and power is largely observed cross-culturally. This article has attempted to demonstrate how an analysis of indexical connections through etymology can, not only reveal ancient mental perceptions of the universe, but also unravel the mechanics of the Egyptians’ experience with their environment.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I am very thankful to James P. Allen, Matthew Rutz, and Laura Hawkins for their support and useful comments. I would like to show my gratitude as well to John Cherry for the interest shown in this work and his insightful observations. A shorter version of this article was presented at the 228th Annual Meeting of the American Oriental Society, and I am grateful for the useful advice that I received during the discussion, and afterwards, from Paul Delnero, John Huehnergard, and Petra Goedegebuure. This article provides an Egyptological point of view of an interdisciplinary issue, and I was very fortunate to count on the input of the aforementioned experts from different fields who helped me to strengthen the results. I am also grateful to the anonymous peer reviewers of the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology for their suggestions, and to the journal editor, Stephanie Boonstra, for her thorough reading of my manuscript and numerous corrections.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

1.

The main case studies of this article are Egypt and the ancient Near East, but they were not isolated. Iron was known and used, for instance, by prehistoric Hopewell people, see O. H. Prufer, ‘Prehistoric Hopewell Meteorite Collecting: Context and Implications’, Ohio Journal of Science 61:6 (1961), 341–52; Inuit, see V. F. Buchwald, ‘On the Use of Iron by Eskimos in Greenland’, Materials Characterisation 29:2 (1992), 139–76; two meteoritic iron blades found in early Chon Dynasty in China (R. J. Gettens, R. S. Clarke and W. T. Chase, ‘Two Early Chinese Bronze Weapons with Meteoritic Iron Blades’, Freer Occasional Papers 4 (1971), 23–56.

2.

J. C. Waldbaum, ‘The First Archaeological Appearance of Iron and the Transition to the Iron Age’, in J. D. Muhly (ed.), The Coming of the Age of Iron (New Haven, 1980), 69–98.

3.

H. Limet, Le Travail du Métal au Pays de Sumer au Temps de la IIIe Dynastie d’Ur (Paris, 1960), 29.

4.

K. Reiter, Die Metalle im Alten Orient unter besonderer Berücksichtigung altbabylonischer Quellen (Münster, 1997), 345; H. Frankfort, ‘Iraq Excavations of the Oriental Institute 1932/33: Third Preliminary Report of the Iraq Expedition’, OIC 17 (1932), 59–62.

5.

Reiter, Die Metalle, 344–5.

6.

Reiter, Die Metalle, 345. E. Photos (‘The Question of Meteoritic versus Smelted Nickel-Rich Iron: Archaeological Evidence and Experimental Results’, WorldArch 20 (1989), 404–18, concludes that the identification of the meteoritic origin of nickel-rich iron relies on a combination of chemical, electron microprobe and metallographic examinations. Also, nickel-rich (martensitic) areas might be created during the process of smelting.

7.

Photos, WorldArch 20, 407. Corundum is an accessory mineral of silica-undersaturated and metamorphic rocks and sediments. Corundum is found in association with hematite and maghemite, and when the goethite structure of aluminum is replaced by Fe it may be exsolved as corundum. M. A. Wells, R. J. Gilkes, and R. R. Anand, ‘The Formation of Corundum and Aluminous Hematite by the Thermal Dehydroxilation of Aluminous Goethite’, Clay Minerals 24 (1989), 513–30.

8.

Photos, WorldArch 20, 406.

9.

D. Johnson, J. Tyldesley, T. Lowe, P. J. Withers, and M. M. Grady, ‘Analysis of a Prehistoric Egyptian Iron Bead with Implications for the Use and Perception of Meteorite Iron in Ancient Egypt’, Meteoritics & Planetary Science 48:6 (2013), 997–1006.

10.

D. Comelli, M. D’ Orazio, L. Folco, M. El-Halwagy, T. Frizzi, R. Alberti, V. Capogrosso, A. Elnaggar, H. Hassan, A. Nevin, F. Porcelli, M. G. Rashed, and G. Valentini, ‘The Meteoritic Origin of Tutankhamun’s Iron Dagger Blade’, Meteoritics & Planetary Science 51:7 (2016), 1301–9.

11.

D. Johnson and J. Tyldesley, ‘Iron from the Sky’, in C. Price, R. Forshaw, A. Chamberlain, and P. Nicholson (eds) Mummies, Magic and Medicine in Ancient Egypt (Manchester, 2016), table 32.1, 409.

12.

Reiter, Die Metalle, 346; Johnson et al., Meteoritics & Planetary Science 48, 1003–4; Johnson et al., in Price et al. (eds), Mummies, 410.

13.

G. A. Wainwright, ‘Iron in Egypt’, JEA 18 (1932), 5–6.

14.

J. R. Harris, Lexicographical Studies in Ancient Egyptian Minerals (Berlin, 1961), 59; E. Graefe, Untersuchungen zur Wortfamilie bjȝ-, (PhD thesis, Universität zu Köln; Köln, 1971).

15.

For the concept of indexicality in semiotics, see C. S. Peirce, Philosophical Writings of Peirce, (Dover, 1955), 107.

16.

Wainwright, JEA 18. As Harris notes, the word was probably also used to define haematite, magnetite and iron ores, which were universally confused in antiquity (Harris, Egyptian Minerals, 167–8).

17.

Harris, Egyptian Minerals, 168–70.

18.

Lalouette collected the examples from the Palermo Stone and the Coptos decree (Sixth Dynasty) in which bjȝ statues and barges, which were clearly made of copper, are mentioned, C. Lalouette, ‘Le “firmament de cuivre”. Contribution à l’étude du mot [bja]’, BIFAO 79 (1979), 335–7. However, in all those cases N41/42 for bjȝ is never used, while N32 is employed instead. Harris thinks N32 is a variant of N34 and it is read as ḥmtj, meaning just ‘copper’ (Harris, Egyptian Minerals, 61–2). Aufrère follows him in this reading, S. Aufrère, L’Univers minéral dans la pensée égyptienne II: L’intégration des Minéraux des métaux et des ‘trésors’ dans la marche de l’univers et dans la vie divine, (BdE 105; Cairo, 1991), 449–50. Also Posener-Krieger thought the sign N32 is not to be read as bjȝ but sṯt ‘copper from Asia’, P. Posener-Krieger, ‘Sur un nom de métal égyptien’, in C. F. A. Schaeffer (ed.), Mission de Ras Shamra XVII: Ugaritica VI (Paris, 1976), 419–26, and Lalouette responded presenting the spelling of bjȝ in the Pyramid Texts with the determinative N32 (Lalouette, BIFAO 79, 175, n. 2). However, as Posener-Krieger showed, the N32 sign alone stands in contrast with the word bjȝ in the documents of Abusir, proving that the sign could not be read as bjȝ (Posener-Krieger, in Schaeffer (ed.), Ras Shamra XVII, 424–5). In the Pyramid Texts, there are actually four different signs used as determinatives of bjȝ (never ideograms) a rhomboid, a small circle, a smaller drop and a bigger drop; they are all used interchangeably and appear to be variants of each other. A denomination of Sinai was bjȝw which could mean ‘that of copper’, and therefore it is plausible that the words for both ‘iron’ and ‘copper’ were pronounced in a similar way and spelled like bjȝ at some point in Egyptian history, just as लोह in Sanskrit was used for both materials. However, bjȝ is not a general term for metals. In PT *714 ḳsw.k bjȝw ʿwt.k nbwt ‘your bones of bjȝ, your limbs of golden’ proves that bjȝ was at least something different from ‘gold’. There was no reason for the Egyptians to believe that copper came from the sky, and thus all heavenly references of bjȝ in the Pyramid Texts should probably be translated as ‘iron’. The only instance in the Pyramid Texts of the determinative with the bigger drop is in Unis pyramid PT 38, 3 ‘an ingot of god’s bjȝ’, maybe the only textual example of ‘copper’ as bjȝ in the whole corpus. The scribal traditions, and choice of ideograms and determinatives of the Old Kingdom prestigious documents such as the Abusir papyri, letters concerning royal works (JE 52001A published in P. Posener-Kriéger, ‘Fragments de Papyrus Provenant de Saqqarah’, RdE 32 (1980), 83–93), or royal decrees H. Goedicke, Königliche Dokumente aus dem Alten Reich (Wiesbaden, 1967), are almost identical with the sign repertoire in the Pyramid Text. The word for ‘copper’ in all the Old Kingdom sources, including the royal decrees, is unmistakably represented by the N32 sign, and therefore the opposition of the former and the N41 sign in the Abusir papyri must be seen as irrefutable evidence of the differentiation of the two lexemes ‘copper’ and ‘iron’ in the Pyramid Texts as well.

19.

Wb I, 439.6–9.

20.

Textual references are numerous, such as Pyramid Texts PT 257, PT 509; the Mastaba of Geref/Itji; the tomb of Mehu; mastaba of Tjetu I; Meri-ib’s inner coffin; and Iren-achti’s coffin. See also Graefe, Wortfamilie bjȝ, 40–6, for Middle Kingdom attestations of the use. For a different spelling of the word with the negation arms (D35) and the determinative of the sledge, see J. J. Clère, ‘L’ancienneté des negations à b initial du nèo-ègyptien’, MDAIK 14 (1956), 29–33. I am very thankful to Leo Depuydt for bringing Clère’s article to my attention.

21.

In the Pyramid Texts, the sign used for bjȝ as ‘waters of the sky’ and ‘iron’, is the same as for ḥm, namely N42. The signs later on increase in details, appearing sometimes as the N42 well full of water. However, the association between bjȝ as ‘waters of the sky’ and the N42 sign is undeniable. Graefe collected some instances of the bjȝ sign as ‘Himmel’ in Graefe, Wortfamilie bjȝ, tables 3, 8, from which nos 6, 14, 17, 30, 31 clearly display a N42 sign from the Old Kingdom to the Late Period inscriptions. I would add to this list the sign in the First Intermediate Period Stele of Kemnen (Museo Egizio, cat. 1513) with layers of water inside the container; and the sign in the Middle Kingdom Stele of Henenu (Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts l.1.a 5603) displaying waves. Furthermore, all these words have determinatives related to water, such as the island N18, the waters N35 and the canal N36. Therefore, N41 is just a more detailed variant of the original N42 used in the Pyramid Texts.

22.

Wainwright, JEA 18, 11.

23.

In ‘A New Concordance of the Pyramid Texts’ <> accessed 12 March 2019, Allen reconstructs the lost passage at line 13 as tȝ rdw nw bjȝ ẖr.k ‘a footpath of iron is under you’ based on the parallel from CT 516. One would wonder however, if the object made of bjȝ should not be reconstructed as nwḥw ‘cords’ instead, as in PT 214, given that the verb used to interact with the ‘footpath’ is ḥfd meaning ‘climb’. Be that as it may, the iron cords or footpaths would allow the king to ascend to the sky.

24.

In PT *714 lines 1–2: ḳsw.k bjȝw ʿwt.k nbwt ‘your bones of iron, your limbs of gold’ the meaning of bjȝ as iron, and not metal, in the celestial context of the Pyramid Texts can be appreciated, since a distinction is made between that material for the bones, and gold for the limbs.

25.

J. P. Allen, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (2nd edn; Atlanta, 2015), 366. Sokar literally means ‘speeder’, and was related to the boat that ferried in the sky (ḥnw boat, which means also ‘speed’), as well as metal-working. There are only a few things that ‘speed’ in the sky, among them comets or meteors. I want to thank James P. Allen for making me aware of this in a personal communication.

26.

E. Brovarski, ‘Sokar’, in W. Helck and E. Otto (eds), Lexikon der Ägyptologie V (Wiesbaden, 1984), 1056–8.

27.

PT 325, PT 570; PT 684; PT *714. As first noted by Lalouette, BIFAO 79, 343–5 who gathered the passages but translated bjȝ as copper; and Aufrère, L’Univers Minéral II, 435.

28.

In PT 466 ‘Oh, NN you are the big star companion of Orion who traverses the sky with Orion’, the king is paralleled with Sothis.

29.

Aufrère, L’Univers Minéral II, 433–5.

30.

In his PhD dissertation on the family of words of bjȝ, Erhart Graefe collects all textual attestations concerning the opening and splitting of the bjȝ (Graefe, Wortfamilie bjȝ, 54–6).

31.

The verb is lost, only the determinative Z9 is left, and it is the same used for verbs such as ‘split’, ‘open’ and ‘break’.

32.

Different proposals are discussed in H. Hays, ‘Transformation of Context: The Field of Rushes in Old and Middle Kingdom Mortuary Literature’, in S. Bickel and B. Mathieu, (eds), D’Un Monde À L’Autre: Textes des Pyramides & Textes des Sarcophages. Actes De La Table Ronde Internationale ‘Textes des Pyramides Versus Textes des Sarcophages’ Ifao, 24–26 Septembre 2001 (Cairo, 2004), 177, n. 14.

33.

J. P. Allen, ‘The Cosmology of the Pyramid Texts’, in W. K. Simpson (ed.), Religion and Philosophy in Ancient Egypt (YES 3; New Haven, 1989), 6. See also PT 268 for the association with the Imperishable Stars; in PT 306 the Field of Reeds worships the deceased king in the identity of the Morning Star. Other spells in which the Field of Reeds appear in connection with the sky are PT 265; PT 266; PT 325; PT 419; PT 442; PT 473; PT 504; PT 510; PT 519; PT 512; PT 563; PT 610; PT 655B; PT *704; PT *706.

34.

The fact was also noticed by Graefe, who collects instances from the Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts, and a Greco-Roman inscription from a Theban temple (Graefe, Wortfamilie bjȝ, 60–6). Aufrère collected three other textual examples of reference to iron walls in contexts related to the exaltation of the king and the gods’ power: The decree of Amon for Pinedjem ‘He built a Wall of iron for the one who is in his water’; The hymn of Thutmose III to Amun ‘becomes an excellent fortress for his army … a Wall of iron’; an inscription in Edfu ‘his Wall, around him is like iron’ (Aufrère, L’Univers Minéral II, 438).

35.

R. Caminos, ‘Ei’, in W. Helck and E. Otto (eds), Lexikon der Ägyptologie I (Wiesbaden, 1975), 1185–8; Bickel claims that the egg does not represent a cosmogony on its own, but rather the embryonic state of the first creature (S. Bickel, La Cosmogonie égyptienne avant le Nouvel Empire (Göttingen, 1994), 233–41).

36.

The egg was a metaphor for a mother’s womb, and thus is used also as a determinative for other goddesses such as Isis (G. Rashed, ‘The Egg as a Metaphor for Isis: A Coffin Text Imagery’, in G. Miniaci (ed.) The World of Middle Kingdom Egypt (2000–1550 BC) II (London, 2017), 204–7.

37.

Allen, in Simpson (ed.), Religion and Philosophy, 8–9.

38.

Wb II, 439, 6; R. Van der Molen, A Hieroglyphic Dictionary of Egyptian Coffin Texts (Leiden, 1977), 117.

39.

PT 264; PT 265; PT 266; PT 455; PT 507; PT 519; PT 609; PT *730; PT *739.

40.

C. Watkins, ‘The Golden Bowl: Thoughts on the New Sappho and its Asianic Background’, Classical Antiquity 26:2 (2007), 305–24 for an analysis and defense of the reading and meaning ‘bowl’ for δèπάʹ referring to the sky (306–19); and the study of the phonetic reading tipas for the bowl sign for CAELUM (319–23). I am thankful to Felipe Rojas for letting me know about this publication.

41.

Watkins, Classical Antiquity 26, 320. He refers the reader to the drawing in K. Bittel, R. Naumann, and H. Otto, Yazilikaya: Architektur, Felsbilder, Inschriften und Kleinfunde, I (Leipzig, 1941), 61.

42.

A. H. Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar: Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs, (3rd edn revised; Oxford, 1957), 492.

43.

It is a recognized fact concerning the role of Nut as goddess of the sky. D. Kurth, ‘Nut’, in W. Helck and W. Westendorf (eds), Lexikon der Ägyptologie, IV (Wiesbaden, 1982), 535–6; C. Leitz (ed.) Lexikon der ägyptischen Götter und Götterbezeichnungen, III, (Leuven, 2002), 536 (no. 2).

44.

This is appreciated also through the common oval shape of the sky and Nut (in blue-color like sky, water and iron, see footnote 52) in Egyptian iconography, Westendorf pointed out the fact that representations of the sky are not horizontally placed over the earth, as previously believed, but willingly oblique – W. Westendorf, Altägyptische Darstellungen des Sonnenlaufes auf der abschüssigen Himmelsbahn (Berlin, 1966) – and I believe that this is an artistic device to represent two-dimensionally the vault of the sky. Also worth noting is the oval shape in objects associated with heaven-like headrests see B. R. Hellinckx, ‘The Symbolic Assimilation of Head and Sun as Expressed by Headrests’, SAK 29 (2001), 61–95, or the curved upper tops in post-Middle Kingdom stelae see J. H. Taylor, Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt (Chicago, 2001), 158–62. Bickel notes the relation between ‘egg’ and ‘sky’ in the word sẖnt ‘support of the sky’ (Bickel, La Cosmogonie, 236).

45.

Bickel notes the relation between egg and resurrection in CT 207 and CT 540 (Bickel, La Cosmogonie, 238).

46.

Graefe links the opening of the bjȝ to the Opening of the Mouth instead (Graefe, Wortfamilie bjȝ, 64–5)

47.

R. Friedman, ‘A short history of ostrich eggs’, Nekhen News 19 (2007), 12.

48.

See for example the First Dynasty private stelae of Umm el-Qa’ab: G. T. Martin, Umm el-Qaab VII: Private Stelae of the Early Dynastic Period from the Royal Cemetery at Abydos (AV 123; Wiesbaden, 2011), nos 113, 192, 283.

49.

The relation between women, water, and creation could be explained considering that in the Egyptian mind, the universe originated from the Primeval Waters, just as a woman breaks her water when giving birth. The idea of primeval waters is universal, and it is associated with primordial chaos, and maternal waters at the same time: D. A. Leeming, ‘Primordial Waters’, in D. A. Leeming (ed.), Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion (New York, 2014), 1376–7.

50.

The sign in connection with women, sky, water, and iron was already used in the Pyramid Texts, which represents the earliest long corpora of religious texts, and our source for understanding the Egyptian religion at its almost-primeval state. However, as Hays correctly pointed out, earlier religious texts are known, such as fragmentary temple blocks from Heliopolis from the period of Djoser (Urk I 154, 2–8) and a fragmentary Thirteenth Dynasty papyrus (P. Ramesseum E), whose text may date back to the Third Dynasty. H. Hays, The Organization of the Pyramid Texts: Typology and Disposition, I (PAe 31; Leiden, 2012), 1, n. 3.

51.

It would be tempting to suggest that this is the explanation for the two colors of the sky, blue (water) and red (iron), but there does not seem to be an association between iron and red in Egyptian iconography. In fact, Piehl noted that iron objects were depicted in blue in Old Kingdom scenes, K. F. Piehl, ‘Bronsåldern i Egypten?’ Ymer 8 (1888), 101. The fact that bjȝ is depicted blue in the Pyramid Texts also argues for its translation as ‘iron’.

52.

The association between iron or metal and sky does not remain isolated in the Old and Middle Kingdom examples. Book of the Dead passages such as ‘it is the metal that is the midst of the sky’ (BD 153 A) are quite revealing (Aufrère, L’Intégration des Minéraux, 435–6).

53.

D. Meeks, ‘Meteor’, in W. Helck and W. Westendorf (eds), Lexikon der Ägyptologie, IV (Wiesbaden, 1982), 117–18.

54.

The verb prj here is probably a stative, witnessing to the accomplished fact that the iron came from Seth.

55.

Aufrère, L’Univers Minéral II, 436–7.

56.

Harris, Lexicographical Studies, 59; P. T. Craddock, Early Metal Mining and Production (Washington, 1995), 106–7 also mentions the Greek word for ‘iron’ sideros derived from siros ‘star’; and the blacksmiths from central Sri Lanka who refer to the iron blooms as ‘meteorites’.

57.

J. K. Bjorkman, ‘Meteors and Meteorites in the Ancient Near East’, Meteoritics & Planetary Science 8:2 (1973), 114.

58.

The word an-na seems to denote not only iron but also tin (‘Leipzig-Münchner Sumerischer Zettelkasten’ <> last accessed 12 March 2019), 57; Reiter, Die Metalle, 259–60) which survives into Akkadian as annaku (CAD A/2 127–30 sub annaku). In Akkadian, other words used for iron are parzillu(m) (written syllabically as AN.BAR (CAD P 212 sub parzillu)), amūtum (almost exclusively Old Assyrian, it appears once in the Amarna Letters with an unclear meaning, B. Landsberger, ‘Tin and Lead. The Adventure of Two Vocables’, JNES 24 (1965), 290, n. 24. It is evidently written KU₃.AN in some instances), perhaps the metal/alloy habalk/ginnu (known exclusively from Amarna, a single Middle Assyrian attestation in J. N. Postgate, ‘Assyrian Texts and Fragments’, Iraq 35 (1973), 13; and the first millennium synonym list an = šamû where it is paired with the equally enigmatic sippatu. It is also a word attested among the Hittites, probably of Proto-Hattic origin, Bjorkman, Meteoritics & Planetary Science 8:2, 114), and probably aši’um – exclusively Old Assyrian, Björkman argues that the disappearance of aši’um and amūtum from the historical record might be due to the increasingly improving techniques of smelting iron, which would lead to the replacement of meteoritic iron by steeling, Bjorkman, Meteoritics & Planetary Science 8, 112. The term aši’um is thought to be a synonym of amūtum because of the alternation of both words in some texts (CAD A/2 442 sub aši’um), but not annaku, which seems to be only used for tin.

59.

The Akkadian word parzillu, and the Hebrew cognate barzel are of unknown origin, and the attempts to derive it from AN.BAR have not received much acceptance since both AN.BAR and parzillu appear in the literature at the same time (Bjorkman, Meteoritics & Planetary Science 8, 114). The word an-bar for ‘iron’ is however attested among the Hittites, J. Siegelová and H. Tsumoto, ‘Metals and Metallurgy in Hittite Anatolia’, in H. Genz and D. P. Mielke (eds), Insights into Hittite History and Archaeology (Colloquia Antiqua 2; Leuven, 2011), 282. A Luwian word *parzil(i) has recently been proposed as the origin of AN.BAR: M. Valério and I. Yakuvobich, ‘Semitic Word for “Iron” as an Anatolian Loanword’, in T. M. Nikolaev (ed.), Исследования по Лингвистике и Семиотике: Сборник статей к юбилею Вяч. Вс. Иванова (Moscow, 2010), 108–16. I am grateful to Petra Goedegebuure for bringing this piece to my attention in a personal communication. It is interesting to note the specification of meteoritic iron as AN.BAR ŠUB AN-e in a chain with 24 beads, see A. Schuster-Brandis, Steine als Schutz- und Heilmittel: Untersuchung zu ihrer Verwendung in der Beschwörungskunst Mesopotamiens im 1. Jt. v. Chr. (Münster, 2008), 133, 394–5.

60.

Probably the most certain Sumerian early lexeme for ‘iron’. The signs KU₃.AN can also be read azag and asakku, meaning ‘taboo’. MZL 745 sub azag (KU₃-AN). Halleux found a possible loanword in the Linear B ku-wa-no (kuanos in Greek) referring to lapis lazuli. R. Halleux, ‘Lapis-lazuli, azurite ou pâte de verre? A propos de kuwano et kuwanowoko dans le tablettes mycéniennes’, SMEA 9 (1969), 47–66. Reiter advances the possibility that ku₃-an does not really mean iron, but an alloy of tin and antimony (Reiter, Die Metalle, 355–7).

61.

Reiter, Die Metalle, 349.

62.

Some texts from Warka under the designation W 13946, such as Text W 13946 h = VAT 16722, E. Heinrich and A. Falkenstein, Sechster Vorläufiger Bericht über die von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft in Uruk-Warka unternommenen Ausgrabungen, (Philosophisch-Historische Klasse. 2; Berlin, 1935), 37, pl. 32.c.

63.

‘Leipzig-Münchner Sumerischer Zettelkasten’, 54 accessed 12.03.2019.

64.

Reiter’s criticism is based on Landsberger’s translation of Inanna and Ebih 86: ‘Let me set out on the road (leading to the) KU₃.AN, let me learn of their mines!’ (Landsberger, JNES 24, 291, n. 25). However, the word buru₃(d) means ‘hole’ or ‘pit’ rather than ‘mine’. (Electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary (ePSD) <http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/nepsd-frame.html> accessed 12 March 2019; ‘Leipzig-Münchner Sumerischer Zettelkasten’, 89; D. A. Foxvog, Elementary Sumerian Glossary, (Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative 2016), 12, <> accessed 12 March 2019). It could well refer to the crater left by the meteorite from which iron was attained. Furthermore, the example that Reiter cites to support her theory of the alloy in the Rimuš-Statue text (Reiter, Die Metalle, 355) can be explained considering that the Sumerian rendering of the Akkadian part of the text KU₃.AN is an-na, which means not only tin but also iron – a nuance of the word that is not recognized by Reiter. In the text, king Rimuš boasts about having fashioned a statue of KU₃.AN, which had never happened before, and Westenholz’s argument against the translation of ‘iron’ in this text is based solely on the absence of statues of iron in the archaeological record; J. G. Westenholz, ‘Object with Messages: Reading Old Akkadian Royal Inscriptions’, BiOr 55 (1998), 46, n. 8. Actually Rimuš’s assessment ‘which had never happened before’ is rather pointing out the rarity of this statue’s material, and hence the translation of ‘iron’ is highly plausible. The fact that KU₃.AN is actually the rarest and most expensive metal, traded in small quantities (Landsberger, JNES 24, 290; Bjorkman, Meteoritics & Planetary Science 8, 110–11), may be witness to the fact that KU₃.AN was the writing used for some specific term for meteoritic iron, namely, a kind of metal with an added magic and symbolic nuance, similar to the concept of black iron among the Hittites (Bjorkman, Meteoritics & Planetary Science 8, 110; P. M. McNutt, The Forging of Israel: Iron Technology, Symbolism and Tradition in Ancient Society (SWBA 8; Sheffield, 1990) 132–5.). Matthew Rutz kindly informed me of further textual evidence from a šir-gida to Ninurta that seems to confirm the religious connotations of ku₃-an when saying of Ninurta ‘a remote scepter of iron (ku₃-an) is in his hand, the true crown of the sky (an-na) is in his head’ (Ninurta A, ETCSL c.4.27.01: 11–12). Moreover, this text highlights the celestial origin of the ku₃-an inasmuch as it implies that both attributes of the god, scepter and crown, are associated with the sky.

65.

M. Chłodnicki, ‘Trade and Exchange in the Predynastic and Early Dynastic Period in the Eastern Nile Delta’, in B. Midant-Reynes (ed.), Egypt at its Origins 2: Proceedings of the International Conference ‘Origin of the State, Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt’ (OLA 172; Leuven, 2008), 489–500.

66.

Vessels with the names of the Fourth and Sixth Dynasties’ pharaohs in Byblos are numerous, but earliest evidence is not that clear. For discussion and bibliography, see A. Diego-Espinel, ‘The Role of the Temple of Ba’alat Gebal as Intermediary between Egypt and Byblos during the Old Kingdom’, SAK 30 (2002), 105, n. 11. Steinkeller compared the textual cases of Šulgi and Išbi-Erra, the only two Mesopotamian kings who ‘ascended to the sky’ after their death, and the Pyramid Texts celestial post-mortem fate of the king. In his opinion, the kings could have been aware of Egyptian funerary royal beliefs by means of the envoys of Byblos who visited Babylonia in Ur III times, and thus the possibility of Egyptian influence is undeniable if impossible to prove. P. Steinkeller, ‘How did Šulgi and Išbi-Erra Ascend to Heaven?’ in D. S. Vanderhooft (ed.), Literature as Politics, Politics as Literature: Essays on the Ancient Near East in Honor of Peter Machinist (Warsaw, 2013), 434–6.

67.

Aufrère noticed the relation between the iron objects in this ritual and the use of the bjȝ spear to kill Ra’s enemies, first held by Seth in the prow of Ra’s barge, and then by Horus himself. Therefore, Aufrère says on the Opening of the Mouth, ‘On a l’impression d’assister à une sorte d’exorcisme destiné à vaincre un ennemi invisible, l’ennemi, incarnation du mal, qui résiderait en chaque individu’ (Aufrère, L’Univers Minéral II, 436–7).

68.

Hellinckx, SAK 29, 84.

69.

S. Aufrère, ‘A propos du trousseau d’amulettes saïtes en obsidienne et en hématite’, in Hommages à François Daumas, I (Montpellier, 1986), 36; Aufrère, L’Univers Minéral II, 435, 437–8. He mentions other objects such as a dagger and a small iron headrest from the tomb of Tutankhamun, and a Late Period crown from a Tanis burial. Because of their funerary context, their role was associated with the post-mortem ascension to the sky.

70.

J. Siegelová and H. Tsumoto, ‘Metals and Metallurgy in Hittite Anatolia’, in H. Genz and D. P. Mielke, (eds), Insights into Hittite History and Archaeology (Leuven, 2011), 280.

71.

See for example the word sṯj (Wb IV, 347, 12), meaning either to fertilize a field or to ejaculate, used also together with Shu (Wb IV, 347, 9) to refer to the ‘sowing’ of the creator god.

72.

The coffin was seen as a womb associated with the goddess Nut, in which the deceased would return. Assmann devoted an entire chapter in his book to the concept of death as a return to the deceased’s mother Nut and as a rebirth, J. Assmann, Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt, trans. D. Lorton (New York, 2005), 164–85. He writes of Nut: ‘She is the tomb, the necropolis, the West, and the realm of the dead; all the spaces that receive him, from the smallest to the largest, are manifestations of the womb into which the transfigured deceased enters’. An association between tomb and womb has also been proposed in M. I. Hussein, ‘Anatomy of the Egyptian tomb: “The Egyptian tomb as a womb”’, DE 49 (2001), 25–33.

73.

Bjorkman, Meteoritics & Planetary Science 8, 94; J. C. Fincke, ‘If a Star Changes into Ashes … a Sequence of Unusual Celestial Omens’, Iraq 75 (2013), 171–96.

74.

From a group of seven omens from Enūma Anu Enlil K3119, 21–2 (C. Virolleaud, L’Astrologie chaldéenne: le livre intitulé Enuma (Anu) ilu Bêl, III, suppl. 2 (Paris, 1905), 77–9). For this and many other literary examples, see Bjorkman, Meteoritics & Planetary Science 8.

75.

Wainwright, JEA 18, 7, reported the cases of Ceylon; Jabangir’s thunderbolt and the resulting weapons; and Soyouti saying that in ad 1280 a thunderbolt fell at the foot of Gebel Ahmar upon a stone from which iron was extracted.

Author biography

M. Victoria Almansa-Villatoro is a PhD candidate in Egyptology at Brown University. She is currently working on a dissertation on social identity and royal ideology in Old Kingdom private letters and royal decrees using sociolinguistic and cultural psychology theory to analyze hierarchical and symmetrical communication. Additionally, she is a team member of the Ancient Egypt Research Associates and conducts archaeological fieldwork in Giza.