Many cultures linked meteorites, and meteoric iron, with the sky. Even today, meteors are often called "falling stars", and the association between meteors (the bright traces visible in the sky) and meteorites (the bits that survive the journey and reach the ground) has often been observed. For example, one shower of meteorites was described in Australian oral history (Hamacher & Norris, 2009):

The sky moved, heaved and billowed. The stars tumbled and clattered and fell against one another. The Milky Way split and great star groups were scattered. Many stars fell to the earth, flashing in the sky. A large red glowing mass burst in the air, giving a deafening roar, as it scattered millions of molten pieces on the ground. This occurred all night. The ground was covered in burned holes and great mounds, formed from the falling pieces.

If a meteorite fall was witnessed from not too far away, the actual fall can sometimes be seen. A witness described a meteorite fall in NSW, Australia, 1999, which damaged a house (Flood et al., 2002):

like a huge flamy ball crossing in a direction from the middle northern sky. After a few seconds it broke into one large fragment and two middle-sized bits with a lot of rubble fragments flying off.

If the fall of the rock itself is not visible, light and noise can be seen and heard, leading to a common association of meteorites with lighting. Meteorites themselves were sometimes believed to be the physical remains of lightning bolts, and were called "thunderbolts" (Wainwright, 1932). Sometimes, meteoric iron was believed to be produced when rocks were struck by lightning. Today, people know about other things that fall from the sky and made loud noises and craters: bombs. Some meteorites falls, either from seeing a falling object and then hearing the explosive impact, or just hearing the impact, are mis-identified as bombs dropped from aircraft: https://www.meteorite-recon.com/home/meteorite-documentaries/sulagiri-meteorite-fall/p3

The earliest Egyptian word we know for iron was replaced in about 1300BC with "iron-from-the-sky" (Johnson et al., 2013), so it is quite clear that by this time, it was known that meteorites and meteoric iron came from the sky. The Hittites were also aware of meteoric iron coming from the sky (Bjorkman, 1973).Of course, this isn't the same as being "aware this iron came from outer space" with our modern understanding of outer space.

Any other examples of similar artifacts ?

There are many known artefacts made from meteoric iron. Most, if not all, surviving Bronze Age iron objects are meteoric iron. The tomb of Tutankhamun contained contained other iron objects. An iron amulet and a miniature model iron head-rest (i.e., a pillow) were found in his coffin, and 16 miniature blades elsewhere in the tomb (Johnson et al., 2013). 5,000 year old Egyptian iron beads have been found. Two ancient Chinese axe heads with bronze bodies and meteoric iron blades have been found. Bjorkman (1973) lists some of the ancient meteoric iron objects, such as a macehead(?), an axehead, amulets, plaques, and small fragments.

Any theories on why they even chose this metal to smelt ?

A key attraction was the sky-origin. The known meteoric iron objects are mostly, if not all, from the Bronze Age and later, when bronze provided a cheaper and more readily available, more easily worked, and more corrosion resistant metal, just as hard and tough as iron. Meteoric iron was used specifically because it was meteoric. Meteoric iron continued to be used on occasion well into the Iron Age for the same reason.

In principle, meteoric iron might have seen some use before the Bronze Age purely for practical purposes. For example, telluric iron (i.e., naturally occurring metallic iron of non-meteoric origin) was used in Greenland into recent times for making small blades and projectile points because it was the only metal available.

As a final note on terminology, "smelting" is the process of converting non-metallic ore into metal. This isn't necessary for meteoric iron, since it's metallic iron rather than iron ore. The oldest-known meteoric iron objects are usually cold-forged (the 5,000 year old Egyptian beads and the Bronze Age Chinese axe blades were cold-forged). Later objects can be cold-forged or hot-forged, and are sometimes forge-welded (e.g., Tutankhamun's dagger and head-rest). Much more recent objects sometimes combine a small amount of meteoric iron with smelted iron, such as the small fraction of Indonesian keris blades which include meteoric iron, e.g., from the Prambanan meteorite.

The Prambanan meteorite is a good example of the reverence and awe that meteorites can inspire. It is enshrined due to its heavenly origin:

• https://i.imgur.com/YEFvlmw.jpg

• https://i.imgur.com/cfZ9Hxv.jpg

References

Bjorkman, J. K. (1973), "Meteors and Meteorites in the Ancient Near East", Meteoritics 8(2), 91-132. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1973Metic...8...91B

P.G. Flood, P.M. Ashley & R.E. Pogson (2002), "The Dunbogan L6 Chondrite: A New Meteorite Fall from New South Wales, Australia", Records of the Australian Museum 54: 249–254. https://media.australian.museum/media/Uploads/Journals/17940/1364_complete.pdf

Hamacher, D. W., & Norris, R. P. (2009). Australian Aboriginal geomythology: eyewitness accounts of cosmic impacts? Archaeoastronomy 22, 60-93. https://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/rnorris/papers/n243.pdf https://arxiv.org/abs/1009.4251

Johnson, Diane; Tyldesley, Joyce; Lowe, Tristan; Withers, Philip J.; Grady, Monica M. (2013), "Analysis of a prehistoric Egyptian iron bead with implications for the use and perception of meteorite iron in ancient Egypt", Meteoritics & Planetary Science 48(6): 997-1006. https://doi.org/10.1111/maps.12120

Wainwright, G. (1932), "Iron in Egypt", The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 18, 3-15. https://doi.org/10.2307/3854899 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3854899