Blog Post 6: What Sokka and King Tut have in common.

Sokka, from Avatar, the Last Airbender. Curtesy from The Nerdist.

King Tutankhamen’s golden sarcophagus, curtesy ThoughtsCo.

Avatar the Last Airbender has received a surge of popularity in the past few years, as it is considered one of the most popular cartoon shows to ever air. One of the characters, Sokka, is a teenage boy from the Southern Water tribe and has multiple tools and skills, like his boomerang, to save the day.

King Tutankhamen was a boy king of Egypt during the New Kingdom, around 1300 BC, according to Wikipedia. He died when he was still a teenager, around 19, and was buried in the Valley of the Kings. His tomb would remain unraided and perfectly preserved until Howard Carter discovered it in 1922. Although King Tut was not that important in terms of history of Egypt, he is still one of the best preserved and most documented pharaohs we have from history.

So what do these two people have in common and why the hell am I talking about them in an astronomy blog? Well they both happen to have a side arm, Sokka has a sword and King Tut had a dagger. There is strong evidence that suggests that both were made out of meteorites.

Sokka receives his sword in an episode focused around him learning from a sword master. At the beginning, there was an meteor impact that happened near a town, and the gang had to stop the fireball. However, due to our previous homework regarding impacts, a meteor of that size would have done much more damage to the surrounding area, and almost all members of the crew would have been killed or severely injured. However it’s a kids cartoon, so I will say that this is acceptable.

King Tutankhamen was found with many gold artifacts, sarcophagus, and weapons to prepare him for the afterlife. Near his body, he had a gold dagger and an iron dagger. This would not have raised any suspicion, except this was the bronze age and true iron forging techniques developed much later. Egypt also referred to iron as “iron from the sky,” and the material in pure form was more valuable than gold at the time. Researchers further analyzed the dagger recently, and in 2018, a paper was published about the true composition. The dagger had trace amounts of iron, nickel, and cobalt, according to History. These three elements are commonly found in meteorites, giving more validity to the theory that this weapon was from a meteorite.

Though this does not contribute to learning more about stars and our solar system, it does show that we as humans have always been fascinated by what lies beyond our sky. Ancient Egyptians had revered such fascinating objects, and even in pop culture today meteorites and space still just as amazing. In fact, multiple people recently have been inspired to take meteorites and turn them into art, such as jewelry, paperweights, or even more swords.

Yoshindo Yoshiwara’s sword forged from the Gibeon Meteorite, credit for image to TheNerdist.