Meteorites in Ancient Egypt

At http://phys.org/print289127301.html … researchers at the Open University and the University of Manchester have found conclusive proof ancient Egyptians used meteorites to make artifacts – in this instance, a string of iron beads. They were found in the Gerzeh cemetery in 1911 and date to the 4th millennium BC. This date is thousands of years prior to the Iron Age in the region and the study is somewhat of a rebuff to academics of the 1980s who disputed the use of meteorite iron in the ancient world – believing that iron meteorites were a rare event and in short supply. They claimed such early examples of iron were crude attempts at smelting iron ore – it could not have fallen out of the sky. The new analysis puts this claim to bed. The name of one of the co-authors caught my eye – Joyce Tyldesley. Funny thing but I picked up a second hand copy of one of her books yesterday, from Stratford on Avon, just £2. Lots of information of Ramesses II.