Egyptian texts name meteoric iron biA n pt, "metal of heaven," a term distinct from the word used for ordinary terrestrial iron, and treat it with a reverence that everyday iron did not receive; iron worked from ore was, for long stretches of Egyptian history, associated with Set and with disorder rather than treated as a precious material. The distinction mattered because the source, not the composition, was what made the metal sacred: an iron-nickel alloy that had visibly come down from the sky carried a different status than the same elements dug from the ground, even where later smelting could produce iron of comparable quality.
That association between celestial origin and sanctity is not unique to Egypt. Iron-working and iron-poor cultures alike, from the circumpolar peoples who worked the Cape York fall to societies across the ancient Near East, treated worked meteoric metal as a gift arriving from outside the ordinary world, a status many cultures never extended to iron smelted from common ore.
Sources The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient EgyptRichard H. Wilkinson with Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)