King Tutankhamun’s Comet…

While I was excavating at the Great Pyramids in Egypt and working on objects from our cemetery kept in the Egyptian Museum, I had the opportunity to photograph the entire exhibit of King Tutankhamun’s tomb contents–even though the lights were turned off and flash wasn’t allowed. One of the objects I’ve always treasured is this pendant with a scarab at its center. To read a recent article on the connection of this scarab “brooch” to an ancient comet, please click here. Here’s a quote from the article:

Fewer still know about the striking yellow-brown scarab that is set at its center, and that it is made of a yellow silica glass stone procured from the sand of the Sahara and then shaped and polished by ancient craftsmen. The silica glass was originally formed 28 million years ago, when an ancient comet entered the earth’s atmosphere and exploded over Egypt, heating up the sand beneath it to a temperature of about 2,000 degrees Celsius and resulting in the formation of a huge amount of the yellow silica glass, which lies scattered over a 6,000 square kilometer area in the Sahara…