[adolph]

My recollection was that the Washington Monument has an aluminum cap on account of the material's status as a precious material at the time. What I found at the below link is a story of "fake it until you make it" pushing of materials science and self-promotion worthy of an HN read.

https://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/9511/binczewski-9511.h...

[monocasa]

Yeah, until the Bayer process was discovered to pull aluminum out of bauxite in the late 1880s, it was worth more than gold. Tutankhamen had an aluminum ankh very close to his body for that reason.

And even for a long time after that, before we had a critical mass of aluminum for recycling, it was still extremely expensive because of how capital and energy intensive the Bayer process is. For that fifty or so years it held a similar niche as aluminum in practical materials science.

[robocat]

> Tutankhamen had an aluminum ankh

The ability to make Aluminium would be alien technology to the ancient Egyptian culture. There’s a good reason it’s production was only discovered in modern times.

My guess is that you were thinking of Tutankhamun's meteoric iron dagger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutankhamun%27s_meteoric_iron_... “Nineteen iron objects were discovered in the tomb of Tutankhamun, including a set of blades which appear very similar to those used in the Egyptian opening of the mouth ceremony (a ritual performed for the benefit of the deceased to enable an afterlife). These blades are also intricately linked to iron and stars, being described in temple inventories as composed of iron and were themselves frequently referred to as the stars. The other iron objects were wrapped with Tutankhamun's mummy; these include a miniature headrest contained inside the golden death mask, an amulet attached to a golden bracelet and a dagger blade with gold haft. All were made by relatively crude methods with the exception of the dagger blade which is clearly expertly produced. This suggests that the dagger was probably imported to Egypt perhaps as a royal gift from a neighboring territory, indicating that at this time Egypt's knowledge and skills of iron production were relatively limited. Only further analytical testing can confirm if all of these artifacts are made from meteorite iron but they do appear to suggest that iron was a material used to indicate high status at the time of Tutankhamun's death in approximately 1327 BC.”.

[caf]

There was, however, ingots of aluminium among the French crown jewels for a while.

[dboreham]

Dang. I had this image of Tut collecting all his old gum wrappers then fusing them in a hot fire.

[thelittleone]

> The ability to make Aluminium would be alien technology to the ancient Egyptian culture.

The pyramids, on the other, employed perfectly logical building techniques for that age of human development.