The religion of ancient Egypt said that when a king died, his soul ascended to the heavens to join with the god Osiris, in the modern-day constellation Orion.

His tomb was filled with items he might need to help him on his way. And in the case of at least one pharaoh, some of those items probably came from the heavens.

The tomb of King Tutankhamen contained thousands of artifacts. Many of them were made of gold, including a dagger buried inside his coffin. But the boy king also had a second dagger, made of iron.

When Tut was buried, more than 3300 years ago, Egypt hadn’t started to work with iron ore, so the dagger probably was made from an iron meteorite – a space rock that fell to Earth. The composition of the dagger’s metal is much like that of a metallic meteorite – a mixture of iron and nickel, with a pinch of cobalt.

Another Tut artifact was an elaborate piece of jewelry known as a pectoral. Its centerpiece is a scarab beetle carved from yellow glass.

The glass formed about 26 million years ago, when an asteroid or comet plunged toward Earth. It either hit the surface or exploded in the atmosphere. Heat from the explosion melted some of the desert sand, creating chunks of glass. One of those chunks eventually made its way to an Egyptian artist, and then to Tut’s tomb – a piece of glass from the heavens for a king traveling to the heavens.

Tomorrow: into the void.

Script by Damond Benningfield