143 Fun Facts About Ancient Egypt

What formal writing system was used in ancient Egypt for monumental inscriptions and religious texts?

Hieroglyphs fell out of use under Roman rule: the last known inscription was carved at Philae in AD 394, and the signs then went unread for more than 1,400 years.

Which major river was crucial to the development and sustenance of ancient Egyptian civilization?

The Nile River, one of the world's longest, flowed northward through Egypt, providing fertile soil, water for irrigation, and a primary transportation route, which allowed the civilization to flourish for millennia.

What was a central belief in ancient Egyptian religion regarding what happened after death?

Ancient Egyptians viewed death as a transition, believing that proper moral conduct and funerary practices were crucial for the soul to navigate the underworld and achieve rebirth and eternal happiness in the afterlife.

Which pharaoh is traditionally credited with commissioning the Great Pyramid of Giza?

Khufu's pyramid was the tallest structure on Earth for more than 3,700 years, yet the only complete portrait of the king is an ivory figurine 7.5 centimetres high.

Which jackal-headed ancient Egyptian god oversaw mummification and guided souls to the underworld?

Anubis was credited with inventing embalming itself: in myth he prepared the body of a murdered god for burial, and embalmers worked under his protection ever after.

Which female New Kingdom pharaoh built a mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahari?

Hatshepsut held power for about two decades, most of them as king; late in her successor's reign her statues were torn down and her monuments defaced.

Which scholar announced in 1822 that he had worked out how to read Egypt's ancient scripts?

Jean-François Champollion is said to have run to his brother shouting 'I've got it!' and then fainted; days later he presented his findings to the Académie des Inscriptions.

Which Upper Egyptian city, home of the Karnak and Luxor temples, was long Egypt's capital after the pyramid age?

Thebes, modern Luxor, was so famous for its wealth that Homer sang of 'hundred-gated Thebes'; an Assyrian army sacked the city in 663 BC.

The double crown combined Upper Egypt's white crown with Lower Egypt's crown of which colour?

Red was the colour of Lower Egypt's crown; like the double crown itself it is known only from statues and paintings, because no example has ever been found.

In Plutarch's telling, which Roman general did Egypt's last queen reach by hiding in a bed sack?

Julius Caesar was captivated, Plutarch says: a friend carried her indoors tied up in a bed sack, and Caesar then backed her claim to a share of the throne.

Egypt's great river flows northward and empties into which body of water?

The Nile empties into the Mediterranean Sea through its delta; because the river flows south to north, Egyptians called the delta 'Lower Egypt' and the southern valley 'Upper Egypt'.

Which natural salt did embalmers pack around a body to dry it during mummification?

Natron, a soda salt scraped from dry lake beds such as the Wadi Natrun, left its name in chemistry: sodium's symbol Na stands for natrium, a word coined from it.

Which pharaoh's tomb, discovered in 1922, was found largely intact with its vast treasures?

The discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb by Howard Carter provided an unprecedented look into the wealth and burial practices of ancient Egyptian royalty.

Which Egyptian goddess was depicted with the head of a domestic cat?

Bastet began as a fierce lioness and softened over the centuries into a cat; so many cats were mummified in her honour that whole cemeteries of them grew up at Bubastis.

What massive structures were primarily built as tombs for pharaohs and other high-ranking officials?

The pyramids, particularly those at Giza, are among the most iconic symbols of ancient Egypt, serving as monumental tombs designed to protect the pharaoh's remains.

What writing material did Egyptian scribes use for their scrolls of letters, accounts and sacred texts?

Papyrus came from the pith of a wetland sedge, sliced, layered crosswise and pressed; the word gave us 'paper'.

During which historical period were the Great Pyramids of Giza primarily constructed?

The Old Kingdom, often referred to as the 'Age of the Pyramids,' was a period of significant architectural achievement, including the construction of the Great Pyramids.

Which god, shown as a mummified king, was revered as ruler of the dead and the underworld?

Osiris was at first the god only dead kings joined; from about 2000 BC every Egyptian could hope to be united with him after death.

What process did Egyptians use to preserve bodies for the afterlife?

Mummification mattered because Egyptians believed the dead could only be reborn if the body survived intact; the full process took about 70 days.

Which Egyptian sun god, shown with a falcon's head beneath a sun disk, sailed across the sky by day?

Ra crossed the sky in one boat by day and the underworld in another by night, where he had to defeat the serpent Apep before he could rise again at dawn.

The 18th Dynasty woman who ruled as king sent a trading expedition for myrrh trees to which land?

Punt sent back living myrrh trees, which were planted at the queen's temple at Deir el-Bahari; its reliefs show the ships and Punt's rulers, King Parahu and Queen Ati.

What famous artifact, discovered in 1799, gave scholars the key to reading ancient Egypt's lost scripts?

The Rosetta Stone repeats one decree of 196 BC in three versions; because scholars could already read the Greek one, it gave them a crib for the two Egyptian scripts.

Ancient Egyptian bread was made almost exclusively from which variety of grain?

Emmer was harder to mill than other wheats, and grit from the grinding stones wore down Egyptian teeth, as their mummies show.

What protective symbol, a rearing cobra, was frequently seen on the headdresses of pharaohs?

The uraeus was more than an ornament: the cobra of the goddess Wadjet on the king's brow was what marked him as a legitimate ruler.

Which pharaoh built a new capital at Amarna and devoted it to the worship of a single sun disk?

Akhenaten had the names of other gods cut from temple walls; within a few years of his death his new city was abandoned and his own name was erased in turn.

What were the special containers used to hold the internal organs removed during mummification called?

Canopic jars were named by early Egyptologists after Canopus, a town in the Delta, through a mistaken link with a Greek legend about a hero worshipped there in the form of a jar.

In ancient Egyptian art, what color was frequently used to symbolize life, growth, and resurrection?

Green stood for new life, growth and resurrection because it was the colour of fresh crops after the yearly flood; the god of rebirth himself is usually painted with green skin.

Which animal was sacred to Thoth, the god of writing, who was usually shown with its head?

Ibis mummies were the favourite offering to Thoth: pilgrims paid for so many that millions of the embalmed birds lie stacked in underground galleries such as those at Tuna el-Gebel.

The word 'pharaoh' comes from per-aa, 'great house', which originally named what?

The royal palace was the 'great house' for centuries; only under the New Kingdom did the word come to mean the king who lived in it.

Which Old Kingdom king, crowned as a child of six, is traditionally credited with Egypt's longest reign, over 90 years?

Pepi II is given 94 years by the ancient historian Manetho, but some Egyptologists doubt it, since the latest dated record from his reign falls about thirty years short.

From which land did Egypt import the cedar timber it used to build its finest ships?

Lebanon's cedar came by sea through the port of Byblos for so long that an early Egyptian word for a seagoing vessel was 'Byblos ship'; the boat buried beside the Great Pyramid is cedar.

What material were most ancient Egyptian homes typically constructed from?

Mud bricks were shaped in moulds from river mud and left to harden in the sun; even kings' residences were built of them, since stone was kept for temples and tombs.

During the mummification process, which vital organ was usually left inside the body?

The heart was considered the seat of intelligence and emotions by the ancient Egyptians, and thus was usually left in the body during mummification, unlike other major organs.

What term refers to the ancient Egyptian concept of cosmic order, truth, balance, and justice?

Ma'at was the king's first duty: he was appointed to uphold it against isfet, its opposite, the injustice and chaos that always threatened to return.

What major desert borders Egypt to its west?

The Libyan Desert, the north-eastern Sahara, is where a whole Persian army is said to have vanished around 525 BC while marching on the Siwa oasis.

Which warrior pharaoh, nicknamed the 'Napoleon of Egypt', took Egypt's empire to its greatest extent?

Thutmose III fought at least 17 campaigns, all recorded as victories; at Megiddo he surprised his enemies by leading his army through a narrow mountain pass.

The Dream Stele, promising a prince the throne for clearing away sand, stands at which monument?

The Great Sphinx was deep in drifting sand when the future Thutmose IV fell asleep in its shadow; he had it cleared as his dream demanded and placed the slab between its paws.

What was the main purpose of an obelisk in ancient Egypt?

To honor the sun god, obelisks were carved from single blocks of granite and set up in pairs at temple gates; one still lies unfinished in the Aswan quarry, abandoned when the stone cracked.

Whose invading fleet did Ramesses III defeat in the Nile Delta in the 12th century BC?

The Sea Peoples had already devastated Syria; Ramesses III lured their ships into the Delta's waterways, trapped them there, and had the victory carved on the walls of his temple at Medinet Habu.

Which type of bow, which spread to Egypt from western Asia, did New Kingdom armies adopt for its greater power?

The composite bow was laminated from wood, horn and sinew, which stored far more energy than a plain wooden stave of the same length.

The Great Pyramids of Giza were built mainly from what stone, with a finer white variety from Tura for the outer casing?

Limestone blocks make up the bulk; the logbook of an inspector named Merer, found in 2013, records his crew ferrying the white casing stone from Tura to Giza by boat.

What city near modern Cairo, known to Egyptians as Ineb-Hedj, was the capital during much of the Old Kingdom?

Memphis, first called 'White Walls', left its mark on every map: the Greek word Aigyptos, the origin of 'Egypt', is thought to come from the name of the city's great temple.

What Egyptian board game, found in Tutankhamun's tomb, do funerary scrolls show the dead playing against an unseen opponent?

Senet is the game a New Kingdom queen plays alone on the wall of her tomb; it fell out of use in Roman times, and its original rules are now guesswork.

One of the two obelisks that stood before Luxor Temple has towered since 1836 over a square in which city?

Paris received it as a gift from Egypt's ruler Muhammad Ali; France never collected the twin he also offered, and formally gave up its claim to it in 1981.

The 4,500-year-old cedar boat found dismantled beside the Great Pyramid was moved in 2021 to which museum?

The Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza received the boat in August 2021; it had lain in a sealed pit as 1,224 loose pieces until 1954, and was rebuilt like a giant puzzle.

What term describes the fragmented, unstable period between the Old and Middle Kingdoms?

The First Intermediate Period began when the Old Kingdom's central rule collapsed and rival dynasties divided the country; it ended when Mentuhotep II reunited Egypt.

Which god was usually represented as a crocodile or a crocodile-headed man?

Sobek's cult centre in the Faiyum kept a tame sacred crocodile decked with jewels, which is why the Greeks renamed the town Crocodilopolis.

What system of irrigation, trapping the annual floodwater in embanked fields, did the Egyptians develop?

Basin irrigation used earth banks to divide the floodplain into shallow pans that trapped the floodwater and its fertile silt; once the soil was soaked, farmers drained them and sowed.

Who was the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt?

Cleopatra VII, the last Ptolemaic ruler, died in 30 BC after Octavian defeated her and Mark Antony at Actium and invaded Egypt, which then became a Roman province.

Which insect became a popular Egyptian amulet as a symbol of the rising sun?

Scarab beetles roll balls of dung and their young seem to hatch from them, so Egyptians pictured the dawn god Khepri as a scarab rolling the newborn sun into the sky.

Which god was the patron of craftsmen and architects, often depicted as a mummified man with a skullcap?

Ptah, in the creation story carved on the Shabaka Stone, brought the gods and the world into being simply by thinking of them and speaking their names.

For most of pharaonic history, what did an ordinary Egyptian soldier mainly rely on for protection in battle?

Shields were almost the only protection Egyptian soldiers had until the 18th Dynasty, when helmets and tunics covered in metal scales first appear in tomb paintings.

The unification of Upper and Lower Egypt around 3100 BC is traditionally attributed to which pharaoh, often identified with Menes?

Narmer wears the crown of one kingdom on one side of a carved stone palette and the crown of the other on the reverse, which is why he is credited with joining them.

The goddess personifying truth and cosmic order wears the feather of which bird on her head?

Ostrich plumes were her emblem and the sign that wrote her name; in the judgment of the dead, one sat in the scales as the standard each soul had to match.

What was the curved sword or battle axe of New Kingdom Egyptian warriors called?

The khopesh grew out of the battle axe, which is why only the outer curve of its blade was sharpened; two were buried with Tutankhamun.

What structure, designed by Imhotep, is considered the world's first large-scale stone building?

The Step Pyramid of Djoser rises in six tiers at Saqqara inside a walled court lined with dummy chapels: solid stone copies of buildings that no one could enter.

Along with bread, what was the staple beverage of ancient Egyptians across all social classes, even paid out as wages?

Beer was food as much as drink: the workers who built the Giza pyramids drew a daily ration of it as part of their wages.

Which Egyptian sky god, depicted as a falcon or falcon-headed man, protected the pharaoh?

Horus was the god each living pharaoh was held to embody, which is why the oldest of a king's official names was his 'Horus name', written beneath a falcon.

Which Greek historian famously called Egypt 'the gift of the Nile'?

Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BC, devoted the second book of his Histories to Egypt and called the country 'the gift of the Nile' because its farmland is the river's deposited silt.

Which god murdered his brother Osiris and then fought Horus for the throne of Egypt?

Set, god of the desert and storms, killed and dismembered Osiris; the dead god's son Horus later defeated Set in a long contest for the kingship.

The Rhind scroll, copied by the scribe Ahmes over 3,500 years ago, is devoted to which subject?

Mathematics, in practical form: to find the area of a round field, the scribe squares eight-ninths of its width, a rule that puts pi at about 3.16.

What rectangular, flat-roofed tomb type housed early kings and Old Kingdom officials?

Mastaba is Arabic for 'bench', which is what these low, flat-topped tombs resemble; shafts beneath them led down to the burial chambers.

From which plant did Egyptians make the linen for clothing and mummy wrappings?

Flax gave Egypt its linen, a cloth so bound up with purity that priests wore nothing else; the same cloth wrapped the dead.

Which spells, carved in Old Kingdom royal tombs, are Egypt's oldest surviving religious writings?

The Pyramid Texts first appear on the walls of the tomb of Unas, last king of the Fifth Dynasty; the spells were meant to free the dead king's spirit and raise it to the sky.

What royal jubilee was traditionally celebrated after thirty years of a pharaoh's reign?

The Sed festival came after thirty years on the throne and every three or four years thereafter; its rites, including a run between boundary markers, reaffirmed the king's hold on both halves of Egypt.

Which dwarf god, shown with a lion's mane and protruding tongue, protected households and childbirth?

Bes, unlike other gods, was drawn full-face instead of in profile; his grimacing figure on beds and mirrors was probably meant to frighten evil away from mothers, children and sleepers.

Which coastal city, founded in the 330s BC, was Egypt's capital under the Ptolemies?

Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great, who marched on before it was built and returned only in death, when his body was brought there for burial.

What name, meaning 'the black land', did ancient Egyptians give their own country?

Kemet, 'the black land', is thought to refer to the dark silt the river spread along its banks, in contrast to Deshret, 'the red land' of the desert on either side.

QV66, a painted tomb in the Valley of the Queens, was built for which wife of Ramesses II?

Nefertari's tomb paintings were rescued by a Getty campaign from 1986 to 1992: salt crystallising in the walls had been pushing whole sheets of painted plaster loose.

On Tutankhamun's mask, a cobra and which bird stand for the two halves of Egypt?

The vulture is Nekhbet, protector of Upper Egypt, and the cobra Wadjet of Lower Egypt; as the 'Two Ladies' the pair also headed one of the five names in every king's full title.

What striped royal headcloth, seen on Tutankhamun's famous mask, draped over the shoulders?

The nemes was a plain piece of striped linen; on Tutankhamun's mask the cloth is copied in precious metal, with the stripes inlaid in blue glass.

Egyptian texts give the gods hair of lapis lazuli and flesh of which metal?

Gold was the flesh of the gods in Egyptian texts, so a dead king was shown in it as one of them: Tutankhamun's funeral mask alone holds about ten kilograms of the metal.

Which was the most important of Egypt's sacred bulls, chosen as a calf by its markings?

Apis bulls were buried at Saqqara in the Serapeum, an underground gallery of huge stone sarcophagi that Auguste Mariette uncovered in the 1850s.

What glazed, typically turquoise-blue material did Egyptians use for amulets, beads and shabtis?

Faience is a borrowed name: it comes from Faenza, an Italian pottery town, yet the Egyptian material is no clay pottery at all, and its makers called it tjehenet, 'the dazzling'.

What dark eye paint, ground from the mineral galena, did Egyptian men and women wear?

Kohl was worn by Egyptians of every class, partly as a remedy for eye complaints and partly, it was believed, to shield the eyes from the glare of the sun.

The great temple that the Ptolemies built for Horus stands at which Upper Egyptian town?

Edfu's temple, built between 237 and 57 BC, lay buried in drifting sand until Auguste Mariette had it dug out in the 1860s.

Which flower symbolised Upper Egypt, as papyrus symbolised Lower Egypt?

The lotus stood for Upper Egypt and papyrus for Lower Egypt; the two plants appear knotted together in the sema-tawy emblem of a united kingdom.

Which looped cross, carried by gods in countless reliefs, was the Egyptian sign for 'life'?

The ankh, a cross with a loop at the top, wrote the word for 'life'; gods are shown holding it to the king's nose to give him breath.

The famous painted bust of Nefertiti is on display in which city's Neues Museum?

Berlin has held the bust since soon after a German team unearthed it at Amarna in December 1912; Egypt has been asking for its return since 1924.

At the Battle of Kadesh, Ramesses II fought which rival empire?

The Hittites fought Ramesses II to what is now judged a stalemate at Kadesh around 1274 BC; some fifteen years later the two empires sealed a peace treaty.

Which foreign dynasty ruled northern Egypt from Avaris before the New Kingdom?

The Hyksos, whose name is thought to come from an Egyptian phrase for 'rulers of foreign lands', rose to power after generations of immigrants from the Levant had settled in the Delta.

Which title, coined in 1842, names the spells Egyptians called 'Coming Forth by Day'?

The Book of the Dead was named by the German scholar Karl Richard Lepsius; it was never one fixed book, and no copy found so far holds all of its roughly 200 spells.

In which direction does the Great Sphinx of Giza face?

East, toward the sunrise: about a thousand years after it was carved, Egyptians were worshipping the Sphinx as a form of the rising sun.

Tomb KV5 in the Valley of the Kings, with over 120 chambers, was built for whom?

The sons of Ramesses II were many: he fathered around a hundred children, and Kent Weeks's team found in 1995 that their shared tomb holds more rooms than any other in the valley.

Ushabti figurines were placed in tombs to serve what purpose for the deceased?

To do manual labour in the afterlife, each figure was inscribed with a spell binding it to answer whenever the gods called its owner out to work the fields of the next world.

Which goddess of love, music and joy had her great temple at Dendera?

Hathor's temple at Dendera once held a carved zodiac ceiling; in the early 1820s a Frenchman had it cut out and shipped to France, where it is now in the Louvre.

Which pharaoh built both the Bent Pyramid and the Red Pyramid at Dahshur?

Sneferu's builders changed the angle of the Bent Pyramid partway up, apparently because it was becoming unstable; the Red Pyramid beside it is thought to be Egypt's first true smooth-sided one.

The pharaohs of Egypt's Twenty-fifth Dynasty came from which kingdom to the south?

Kush had spent centuries under Egyptian rule before its king Piye marched north and conquered his former masters; his line reigned as Egypt's Twenty-fifth Dynasty.

The two giant statues of Amenhotep III near Luxor were named by Greek visitors after which hero of the Trojan War?

Memnon, an Ethiopian king killed at Troy, was the son of the dawn goddess, which is why the statue reported to cry out at sunrise was taken to be him.

The Abu Simbel temples were moved in 1968 to escape the rising waters of which reservoir?

Lake Nasser, the reservoir behind the Aswan High Dam, would have drowned the temples, so they were cut into blocks, lifted 65 metres up the cliff and rebuilt by 1968.

Imhotep, a royal architect of the pyramid age, was worshipped two thousand years later as a god of what?

Imhotep was deified as a god of medicine and healing; the Greeks equated him with their own Asklepios, although there is no contemporary evidence that he practised as a physician.

The iron dagger buried with the boy king in tomb KV62 was forged from what?

A meteorite supplied the metal: X-ray analysis published in 2016 showed the blade's iron, nickel and cobalt match those of iron meteorites.

The Amarna Letters, a 14th-century BC diplomatic archive, are written in which script?

Cuneiform on clay tablets was the medium of international diplomacy, so even the pharaoh's court wrote to foreign kings in Akkadian, a language of Mesopotamia.

Which modern country, home of the ancient Nubian kings, holds more pyramids than Egypt does?

Sudan has more than 200 pyramids, built as tombs for Nubian royalty at sites such as Meroë. An Italian treasure hunter, Giuseppe Ferlini, demolished several of them in the 1830s.

Cemeteries discovered beside the Giza pyramids in 1990 suggest the Great Pyramid was built mainly by which group?

Paid Egyptian workers lived in a nearby town with its own bakeries and breweries. Many served three-month shifts in place of paying tax, which overturns the Greek tale of slave gangs.

Which body part did a 3,000-year-old Egyptian prosthesis of wood and leather, among the earliest known, replace?

A big toe of wood and leather turned up in 2000 on a body buried near Luxor. Its wear marks show that the owner really walked on it.

Which city holds the most ancient obelisks in the world, eight of them brought from Egypt by its emperors?

Rome has thirteen ancient obelisks. The largest, at the Lateran, was carved for Karnak around 1400 BC and shipped over in AD 357.

Which colour is considered the world's first synthetic pigment, made in Egypt by heating sand with copper and lime?

Blue came from a copper compound now called Egyptian blue. It glows under infrared light, so scientists can find traces on objects that look unpainted to the eye.

Which English archaeologist, who first came to Egypt at 17 to copy tomb paintings, found a sealed royal tomb in 1922?

Howard Carter was digging on borrowed time. His wealthy backer had nearly withdrawn the money, and agreed to pay for just one more season of work in the valley.

In the popular legend retold by Shakespeare, which creature's bite killed Egypt's last queen in 30 BC?

An asp, probably an Egyptian cobra, is the famous version. The ancient writers Strabo, Plutarch and Cassius Dio also report that she may have used a poisoned ointment or hairpin instead.

Which burial term, familiar from Egyptian royal tombs, comes from Greek words meaning 'flesh-eating'?

Sarcophagus first described a stone quarried near Assos that the Greeks believed quickly consumed the bodies laid in it. The word later passed to stone coffins in general.

Which star's return to the dawn sky each summer warned ancient Egyptians that the yearly flood was on its way?

Sirius returned so punctually that Egyptians worshipped it as the goddess Sopdet. The flood itself was erratic, so the star's rising became the marker of their New Year.

Which feared river animal appears as a glazed Egyptian tomb figurine whose legs were probably broken on purpose?

Hippopotamus attacks were a real danger on the river. Three legs of the famous figurine nicknamed William were probably snapped on purpose, to stop him harming the tomb's owner.

Which sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley takes its title from the Greek name of an Egyptian pharaoh?

Ozymandias grew out of a friendly contest with fellow poet Horace Smith. Both men wrote as a colossal royal bust from Egypt was on its way to London.

Which weapon of war is thought to have reached Egypt with the Hyksos, then been redesigned to be lighter and faster?

The chariot gave the pharaoh's army a fast strike arm. Egyptian builders made theirs lighter than the Hyksos model and moved the axle to the back of the platform.

Roughly how many stone blocks, averaging about two and a half tonnes each, went into the Great Pyramid of Giza?

2.3 million blocks went up in about 26 years. The heaviest, granite beams of up to 80 tonnes, were floated in by boat from Aswan.

Which pair of emblems does Tutankhamun hold crossed over his chest on each of his coffins?

Crook and flail stood for two sides of a king's power: the shepherd's crook for his rule over the people, the flail for the fertility of the land.

Which title do Egyptologists give the pharaoh's highest official, who ran the courts, treasury and granaries?

The vizier's duties ran from sitting in the High Court to supervising building projects such as the royal pyramid. The pharaoh could overrule any decision.

Which career does the Egyptian school text The Satire of the Trades call greater than any other profession?

Scribe was the dream job. In the text a father lists the tired arms and grim living conditions of other trades for the benefit of his son.

Which term names the oval ring around a pharaoh's name in inscriptions, meant to protect it from evil spirits?

Cartouche is French for a paper gun cartridge. French soldiers thought the ovals they kept seeing on the ruins looked just like their ammunition.

Which victor of the Battle of Actium seized Egypt in 30 BC and kept it as his personal possession?

Octavian, soon renamed Augustus, gave Egypt governors of equestrian rank. Other provinces had governors of senatorial rank, a class he kept out of this one.

Which unit of length, divided into seven palms and 28 fingers, did Egyptian builders use to lay out the pyramids?

The royal cubit, about 52 centimetres, is the earliest attested standard measure. Surviving measuring rods differ from one another by only a few millimetres.

The lighthouse counted among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World stood on which small island off Egypt's coast?

Pharos gave its name to the tower, and the word then spread. A lighthouse is a phare in French and a faro in Italian and Spanish.

Which Egyptian sky goddess is shown as a star-covered woman arching her body over the Earth?

Nut was often painted on the inside of coffin lids, so that the sky itself seemed to stretch protectively over the dead.

Which Egyptian god, whose name meant something like 'the hidden one', was worshipped at Karnak as king of the gods?

Amun got the credit for Egypt's victories abroad. Grateful pharaohs lavished much of their wealth and captured spoil on building his temples.

Which lion-headed Egyptian goddess was blamed for sending plagues yet also called on to heal the sick?

Sekhmet was said to breathe fire, and Egyptians likened the hot winds of the desert to her breath. Plagues were described as her messengers.

In the daily ritual of an Egyptian temple, what did the officiating priest clothe, anoint and serve a meal at sunrise?

The god's statue was taken from its shrine each dawn, given fresh clothes and anointed with oil and paint. Breakfast followed: meats, fruits, vegetables and bread.

Which Egyptian moon god, whose name means 'traveller', resurrects the Marvel hero Moon Knight as his avatar?

Khonsu owes his name to the Moon's nightly trip across the sky. Egyptians said that when he made the crescent shine, women conceived and cattle became fertile.

Which serpent of Egyptian myth, sharing its Greek name with a near-Earth asteroid, attacked the sun each night?

Apophis was blamed for earthquakes. Each year priests built an effigy of the monster and burned it, to keep the whole country safe for another twelve months.

Which Egyptian monster, whose name means 'devourer of the dead', waited to swallow those who failed the final judgment?

Ammit was assembled from the three largest man-eating animals the Egyptians knew, starting with the head of a crocodile and the forequarters of a lion.

Which ram-horned Egyptian god was said to fashion every human body from clay on a potter's wheel?

Khnum then placed each finished body in its mother's womb. The link with clay came from the silt that the yearly flood left behind.

Which paradise of Egyptian belief did the dead reach by passing a series of gates guarded by demons?

The Field of Reeds was imagined as boundless reed beds like those of the Delta, an idealised copy of the country the dead had left behind.

Which Egyptian funeral ritual used a fishtail-shaped blade and other tools to restore the senses of the dead?

The Opening of the Mouth borrowed its imagery from childbirth. One tool, the peseshkef, was the kind of knife first used to cut a newborn's umbilical cord.

A famous Egyptian tomb painting shows 172 men dragging a stone colossus on a sledge while one man pours what in front?

Water poured ahead of the sledge eased the way for a figure nearly 6.8 metres high, the pride of a provincial governor named Djehutihotep.

Which English earl funded the 1922 dig in the Valley of the Kings, then died months later of an infected mosquito bite?

Lord Carnarvon's death in Cairo in April 1923 sparked newspaper talk of a curse. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle blamed 'elementals' created by ancient priests to guard the tomb.

In Egyptian wall paintings, which part of a standing figure is shown from the front while the head is in profile?

The torso faces the viewer while the head and parted legs turn sideways, so a single figure combines a side view and a front view at once.

Which early king of Upper Egypt, known from a ceremonial macehead, shares his name with a villain of The Mummy Returns?

Scorpion ruled around 3200 to 3000 BC, before the first dynasty. His name is often introduced by a rosette sign that was evidently a designation for kings.

Which Egyptian city, the dig site in Raiders of the Lost Ark, yielded the only known intact royal burials in 1939?

Tanis had been a royal capital for two dynasties. Pierre Montet found three kings there whose burials had escaped the tomb robbers throughout antiquity.

Where in New York does the Temple of Dendur stand, a gift from Egypt after its rescue from the Aswan High Dam?

The Metropolitan Museum of Art won a contest the press nicknamed the Dendur Derby. Rivals in Washington and Boston had each wanted to stand the temple on a riverbank.

Which vast necropolis about 30 km south of Cairo contains the oldest complete stone building complex known in history?

Saqqara never went out of fashion. High officials went on adding private funeral monuments there throughout the entire pharaonic period.

Which pharaoh's pyramid at Giza keeps casing stones near its tip and looks tallest because it stands on higher bedrock?

Khafre's pyramid is only the second largest of the three, but it sits on bedrock 10 metres higher than its bigger neighbour, which fools the eye.

Which raiding confederation, named by modern scholars, attacked Egypt in battles carved on the walls of Medinet Habu?

The Sea Peoples may be misnamed, since most of them appear to have travelled by land. Recent work treats them as refugees from a crisis that was already under way.

Which hairstyle, worn by mortal and divine children alike, marks out a child in ancient Egyptian art?

A sidelock was generally worn on the right. Despite the name it was usually a braid rather than a loose lock, with its end twisted into a spiral.

Which Canaanite city names the 15th-century BC battle that is the first recorded in relatively reliable detail?

Megiddo fell to the pharaoh's army only after a siege of seven months. The battle also produced the first recorded body count in history.

Which pharaoh's victory stele, found by Flinders Petrie in 1896, holds the earliest known written reference to Israel?

Merneptah's stele is mostly about another war entirely. Israel turns up only in the last three of its 28 lines, in a passage on a campaign in Canaan.

Which Persian king conquered Egypt in 525 BC after defeating Psamtik III at the Battle of Pelusium?

Cambyses II had built a navy for the purpose, using men and equipment from Phoenicia. Once in control he took the traditional titles of a king of Upper and Lower Egypt.

Which village of royal tomb builders saw a walkout around 1170 BC that may be the first recorded strike in history?

Deir el-Medina's craftsmen threw down their tools over late supplies. As salaried state employees they earned rations at up to three times the rate of a farmhand.

Which Egyptian priest, writing in Greek in the third century BC, coined the term 'dynasty' for groups of kings?

Manetho started a new dynasty wherever the capital moved or a family line broke. His thirty or so groupings are the chronological backbone of Egyptology.

Which former circus strongman from Padua cleared the sand from Abu Simbel's entrance and discovered the tomb of Seti I?

Giovanni Belzoni stood 6 feet 7 inches tall and once performed feats of strength at London fairs. In Egypt he also removed a seven-tonne royal bust for shipment to England.

Which king of the Thirtieth Dynasty, driven south by a Persian invasion, was the last native ruler of ancient Egypt?

Nectanebo II probably never used the great stone coffin made for him. It ended up in London, where for a time people believed it had belonged to Alexander the Great.

Which people from Nubia gave their name to ancient Egypt's elite desert-ranger police, guardians of the royal tombs?

The Medjay were renowned archers before the name became a job title. The force was posted wherever pharaohs had most to lose: capital cities, royal cemeteries and the borders.

Which pharaoh completed the expulsion of the Hyksos in the 16th century BC, reuniting Upper and Lower Egypt?

Ahmose I inherited the war from his brother Kamose. With the north secured, he went on to reassert Egyptian power in Nubia and Canaan.

Which army commander of common birth took the throne after Ay and began official action against the Amarna rulers?

Horemheb demolished monuments of the Amarna age and reused the rubble in his own building projects. He also took over monuments of his two immediate predecessors as his own.