Size: 5.7cm L / 4.4cm W / 3cm H

( 2.2" L / 1.7" W / 1.2" H)

weight 429 Carat

Winged Scarab Pendant of Tutankhamun Features a Scarab Carved From Rare Libyan Desert Glass

When British archaeologist and Egyptologist Howard Carter entered the intact tomb of King Tutankhamun in 1922, he encountered thousands of luxury objects intended to accompany the boy king into the afterworld.

Among the items decorated with gold, silver and precious gemstones was a breastplate depicting the god Ra as a winged scarab carrying the sun and moon into the sky. The scarab was carved from a pale greenish-yellow stone that Carter originally identified as chalcedony, a translucent variety of quartz.

A decade later, British geographer Patrick Clayton found samples of a similar glass-like material while exploring the Libyan Desert along the border of modern Egypt and Libya and classified it as Libyan Desert Glass (LDG).

Libyan Desert Glass (or Great Sand Sea Glass) is the result of sand on Earth having melted into glass following an enormously energetic asteroid or comet impact approximately 29 million years ago at the border region of what is today Libya and Egypt.

The formation of Libyan Desert Glass and other tektites was long considered a mystery with some researchers believing they had originated on the Moon — a notion since debunked. Scientists today agree such glass formations formed as a result of collisions of cosmic bodies with the Earth. To melt the sand, temperatures of more than 1600° C (2900° F) are required; lava flows at the Earth's surface are nowhere near that hot. In addition, meteorite particles have been detected in specimens of Libyan Desert Glass. As is the case with all tektites, extraordinary heat resulting from massive impacts liquified the ground. (The word tektite comes from the Greek tektos, meaning "melted".)

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