Meteorite Worship in Ancient

Cultures
MATTHEW FLAX • JUN 16, 2022

Matthew's interests include writing, gaming, movies, and pretending to be Irish despite only
having one Irish Great Grandparent.

Shards of clear, natural glass lie scattered throughout the desert near the Dakhleh Oasis in
Western Egypt. Their origins were a mystery until a chemical analysis determined that the
substance was forged by temperatures so high, there could only be one explanation:
meteorites.

Around 100,000 years ago, the area bore a closer resemblance to the African Savannah than
the desert landscape it does now. The impact of the meteorite would have exterminated all life
for several miles, including any human settlements unlucky enough to be caught in the blast.
One can only imagine how our hunter-gatherer ancestors might have reacted to such raw
power plummeting down from the heavens.

Thousands of years later, as early civilizations begin to emerge, the art of writing enabled them
to record the existence of meteorites, although they could only guess at their origins. Ancient
texts reveal a reverence for these fallen rocks, believed to hold mystical powers and bestow
divine blessings.

Here are examples of the significance attributed to meteorites by some of the ancient cultures
that encountered them.

The 'Star Metal' of Ancient Egypt

Thousands of years before any civilization had entered the Iron Age, Old Kingdom Egyptians
were already crafting implements made from iron, although their iron came from above, not
below. In other words, the iron was derived from meteoric matter, confirmed by the high levels
of nickel in Old Kingdom artifacts.

This made ancient Egyptians the earliest known beneficiaries of a substance that would one
day change the world, although this 'star metal' was rare, and used only to create objects of
ceremonial and religious significance.
Egyptians believed this substance to be the same material that the heavens were made of.
Thomas Brophy and Robert Bauval write in Imhotep the African: Architect of the Cosmos that
the Egyptian word for heaven (Bja) is the same word they used to describe what we now know
as iron.

They also believed that their Pharaohs were reborn as 'star-gods', composed of meteoric-iron. A
passage in the pyramid texts (the oldest known religious writings) claims: "The king’s bones are
iron and the king’s members are the imperishable stars...”

So for the ancient Egyptians, meteorites were gifts from the gods, containing a substance
associated with royalty and divine power. It would be around 2000 years before they
discovered that this material could also be retrieved from the ground, and used to forge
weapons and tools.

The Benben Stone Meteorite and the Pyramids

One artifact in particular that may have had meteoric origins is the Benben stone, which is
referred to with great reverence in ancient Egyptian texts. The mystical stone was said to grant
divine visions, or drive a person mad if they refused guidance from the priests who watched
over it. In one ancient Egyptian creation myth, the Benben is the island upon which the creator-
deity Atum stood as he forged the world from the dark, primordial waters that surrounded him.

Hieroglyphs and stone-scale models depict the stone as conical-shaped, just like the pyramids.
Toby Wilkinson, an Egyptologist based at Cambridge University, said in an interview with The
Guardian, "...there is a particular kind of meteorite, a rare kind of meteorite, which as it enters
the atmosphere, is formed into a shape that startlingly resembles a pyramid."

Robert Bauval also believed the Benben stone to have meteoric origins, writing, "its conical
shape and its association with the pyramid’s capstone - the latter a likely symbol of the star-
soul of the departed pharaoh made of ‘iron bones’- is very suggestive of an oriented iron-
meteorite".

This introduces an intriguing possibility; that a meteorite may have inspired the frenzy of
pyramid building that took place in Egypt during the 2nd millennium BC. We can't know for sure,
as we don't know when or where the Ancient Egyptians discovered the Benben stone, just as
we don't know where it is currently located or even whether it still exists.

The pyramid texts say that the stone is kept within the Temple of Ra, in the city of iwnw (known
by its Greek name of Heliopolis); but it likely disappeared centuries ago, and no clue as to its
whereabouts has yet been found amid the ruins of Heliopolis.

What happened to the Benben stone? Much like Punt—a prosperous land that ancient Egyptian
texts describe with great reverence, yet provide no clue as to its whereabouts, the Benben
stone remains a mystery.

Legends of the Benben Stone

No discussion of the Benben stone would be complete without mentioning the legends it
inspired. Some have suggested that it was the very stone upon which Jacob laid his head when
he dreamed of the ladder to heaven (although the Scots claim that same honor for the Stone of
Scone).

Another theory posits that the Pharoah Akhenaten, who attempted to transform Egypt into a
monotheistic state during his reign (around 1300 BC), was driven to do so by visions granted
him by the Benben stone. In Gods of Eden: Egypt's Lost Legacy and the Genesis of Civilisation,
Andrew Collins writes of Akhenaten's obsession with the Benben stone, and his determination
to include depictions and replicas of the stone in every new temple he constructed.

Following Akhenaten's death, the priesthood decreed his followers to be heretics, and banished
them from the kingdom. Sigmund Freud, in his book Moses and Monotheism (published in 1939),
theorized that the leader of these followers may actually have been the biblical Moses. A
controversial claim, as it implies that Moses was an ancient Egyptian noble, rather than a
Hebrew.

Meteorites in the East, West, and Center of the World

Of course, the kingdoms of North Africa were not the sole beneficiaries of meteoric matter. All
around the globe, there is evidence of ancient civilizations having come into contact with fallen
stars, and in all such cases, the remains of these meteorites were afforded special significance.

The Sacred Stones of Ancient Greece

Some of the temples and shrines of ancient Greece held sacred stones, descriptions of which
suggest heavenly origins. For example, the Temple of Artemis (one of the Seven Wonders of the
Ancient World) held an image of the goddess that was claimed to have "fallen down from
Jupiter."

Meanwhile, Artemis' twin brother, Apollo, had a temple dedicated to him at Delphi that may
also have contained a sacred stone. The temple was the location of the famous Delphic Oracle,
which drew pilgrims from far and wide to receive prophecies from the Pythia, high priestess of
Apollo.

The ancient Greeks believed that Delphi was located at the center of the world, with the exact
spot marked by a stone known as the omphalos (meaning 'navel') that was cast down from the
heavens by Kronos, the titan who fathered Zeus.

The omphalos that currently stands at Delphi is only a Roman copy, but the original may well
have been of meteoric origins.

The Star-Tipped Arrows of the Native Americans

Thousands of years ago, the Willamette Meteorite—the largest ever discovered in North
America—crashed into a valley in what is now known as Oregon. The Clackamas tribe,
inhabitants of the valley before the arrival of European settlers, believed it to be the earthly
manifestation of Tomanowos, a spiritual guardian who had watched over them since the
beginning of time. Clackamas hunters would dip their arrows in the rainwater that gathered
around the base of the meteorite, believing it granted powerful properties.

The Willamette Meteorite is currently one of the prime exhibits at the American Museum of
Natural History; but the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde—descendants of the Clackamas
tribe—continue to honor Tomanowos' gift with songs and rituals, including a ceremonial visit to
the exhibit every year.

The 'Space Buddha' That Was Captured by Nazis

Hitler's obsession with ancient artifacts prompted a Nazi expedition to Tibet in 1938, led by
German zoologist and SS officer Ernst Schäfer. Their mission was to discover remnants of an
Aryan civilization; and although they had no luck in that endeavor, they did find a Buddhist
statue with a swastika carved into its midsection.

The ancient Indian symbol would have represented something entirely different to the people
who carved the statue, which is at least thousand years old. Nonetheless, the Nazis were
intrigued enough to take the artifact back with them to Germany.

And there it remained in a private collection in Munich, until it was finally made available for
study in 2007. Samples analyzed by Elmar Buchner of the Planetology Institute at Stuttgart
University revealed high levels of nickel and cobalt. He concluded that the statue (dubbed the
"Space Buddha" by his research team) was carved from the remains of an ataxite meteorite—
the rarest type of meteorite you can find.

The analysis also revealed a close match with the scattered remains of the Chinga meteorite,
which landed between Mongolia and Siberia around 15,000 years ago. The statue could well
have been forged with remains gathered from the impact site. This means that ancient peoples
of the region were exploring the site of the Chinga meteorite over a thousand years before
modern researchers discovered it in 1917; and may even have witnessed the meteorite's
descent.

Not of This World...

We now know enough about meteorites to know that they come from asteroids, not from the
stars, as the ancients may have believed. We also know that they are hurled down from heaven
by the force of gravity, rather than by angry gods. However, our increasing knowledge does
nothing to diminish our sense of wonder, knowing that these rocks are visitors from the vast
infinity of space.

This content is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and is not meant to
substitute for formal and individualized advice from a qualified professional.

Comments

VerityPrice from UK on December 03, 2017:

This is really interesting! Thank you for sharing. I've learned a lot reading this.

Greensleeves Hubs from Essex, UK on September 18, 2014:

Interesting Darryk, and I'm sure you're right about much of this. Anything associated with the
heavens would have been a source of magical awe for ancient civilisations - be it thunder and
lightning, comets, eclipses and the movement of the planets, and indeed meteors and
meteorites. The idea of an object coming from the realm of the Gods and striking the Earth
would clearly have held great religious significance in many cultures.

No doubt such as event may have had an impact on cultural developments even greater than
the impact it made on the surface of the Earth!