100 Fun Facts About Egyptian Mythology

Ra, one of the most important gods by the Fifth Dynasty, was primarily the god of what?

Ra was the sun god, thought to sail across the sky each day in a solar barque and through the underworld each night.

Which god of funerary rites and embalming is usually shown as a man with a canine head?

Anubis, the jackal-headed god of embalming, was painted black to symbolise regeneration and the Nile's fertile soil, not death.

Which bird's head does Horus, god of kingship and the sky, most often wear?

Horus is shown as a falcon or a falcon-headed man; the living pharaoh was regarded as his earthly manifestation.

Which god of writing, wisdom and the Moon is depicted with the head of an ibis or a baboon?

The Greeks equated him with Hermes, and his title 'thrice great' became Hermes Trismegistus.

Which goddess resurrects her slain brother and husband Osiris and protects their heir Horus?

Isis, usually crowned with a throne hieroglyph, revived Osiris long enough to conceive Horus and hid the boy in the Delta marshes.

Set, the murderer of Osiris, was god of deserts, storms and what else?

Set was god of deserts, storms, disorder and violence, yet not purely evil: he rode in Ra's boat each night to spear the serpent of chaos.

Which part of Osiris's dismembered body did Isis fail to recover?

She wrapped what she found, making him one of the first figures linked to the mummy wrap.

In the Osiris myth, the chest containing Osiris's body floats out to sea and washes up at which city?

The chest washed ashore at Byblos, where a tree grew around it; the king had the tree cut into a palace pillar with the chest still inside.

According to the myth, how long does the dispute between Horus and Set over the throne drag on?

The Contendings of Horus and Set says the trial dragged on for eighty years, largely because the presiding sun god favoured Set.

What is the Ennead?

It runs from Atum through Shu and Tefnut, Geb and Nut, down to Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys.

Which primordial god created himself and then fathered Shu and Tefnut, the first divine couple?

Atum, whose name relates to a verb meaning 'to complete', created himself from the primeval waters and was linked with the evening sun.

Nut, the sky goddess, is usually depicted how?

Nut is usually shown as a star-covered woman arching over the earth, swallowing the sun each evening and giving birth to it each dawn.

The Egyptians believed the laughter of which god caused earthquakes?

Geb, the earth god and father of Osiris, was said to shake the ground with his laughter; snakes were regarded as his children.

Shu, the god of air, was said to do what after the First Occasion?

Shu separated the earth from the sky, standing as the dry air between his children Geb (earth) and Nut (sky).

Tefnut's name may be an onomatopoeia for which act by Atum in the creation myth?

In late texts her name was even written with a mouth spitting.

The Ogdoad were eight primordial deities worshipped at which city?

The Ogdoad were the eight primordial gods of Hermopolis; late texts give the four males frogs' heads and the four females serpents' heads.

Ptah, the creator god of Memphis, brought the world into being by what means?

The Shabaka Stone says he gave life to all the gods 'through this heart and this tongue'.

Which god fashioned human bodies from clay on a potter's wheel and placed them in their mothers' wombs?

Khnum, worshipped at Elephantine by the First Cataract, shaped each person on his potter's wheel and was credited with controlling the Nile flood.

Which giant serpent, the enemy of Ra, embodied chaos and darkness?

Apep, called Apophis by the Greeks, was the serpent of chaos that attacked Ra's barque nightly; texts give him a flint head and a 16-yard length.

Ra travelled by night through the underworld in which form?

Ra travelled the underworld at night as a ram-headed god aboard the Mesektet barque, after crossing the sky by day in the Mandjet.

Into how many regions does the Amduat divide Ra's nightly journey through the underworld?

The Amduat divides the underworld into twelve regions, one for each hour of the night; Ra's rays woke the dead as he passed and they slept again after.

What was the Egyptian name for the underworld realm the dead passed through?

The Duat was the underworld through which the dead and the night sun travelled; it is described in the Coffin Texts, the Book of Gates and the Book of the Dead.

What did the ancient Egyptians actually call the text we know as the Book of the Dead?

The Egyptians called it the Spells (or Book) of Coming Forth by Day; the German Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius coined 'Todtenbuch' in 1842.

In the Weighing of the Heart, the dead person's heart was weighed against what?

The scene comes from Spell 125 of the Book of the Dead.

Ammit, who devoured hearts that failed the judgement, combined the parts of which three animals?

Ammit had a crocodile's head, a lion's forequarters and a hippopotamus's hindquarters, the three largest man-eaters the Egyptians knew.

Maat's ideological opposite, meaning injustice, chaos and violence, was called what?

Isfet, meaning injustice, chaos and violence, was the opposite of Maat; the pharaoh's duty was to uphold Maat and repel Isfet.

Which organ did the baboon-headed Hapy, one of the four sons of Horus, guard?

Baboon-headed Hapy guarded the lungs; Imsety (human) had the liver, Duamutef (jackal) the stomach and Qebehsenuef (falcon) the intestines.

How did Ra's daughter Sekhmet come to abandon her massacre of humanity?

She got so drunk she gave up the slaughter and went peacefully back to Ra.

In what form was the goddess Bastet originally worshipped?

Bastet was first a fierce lioness goddess; only in the first millennium BC was she shown as a domestic cat, while Sekhmet kept the warlike lioness aspect.

Which goddess of writing and measurement was shown with a seven-pointed emblem above her head?

Seshat, goddess of writing and measurement, wore a seven-pointed emblem on her head and took part in the 'stretching the cord' rite for laying out temples.

Hathor, goddess of music, love and motherhood, was usually shown as or with the horns of which animal?

Hathor was shown as a cow or as a woman with cow horns cradling a sun disk; her name means 'House of Horus', and Isis later adopted her headdress.

Sobek, associated with pharaonic power and the dangers of the Nile, has the head of which animal?

A Pyramid Text spell praises King Unis as the living incarnation of the crocodile god.

Taweret, protector of childbirth, is depicted as an upright female version of which animal?

Taweret is a pregnant hippopotamus standing upright, often with lion limbs and a crocodile tail; her name means 'the great one', a placatory address.

Bes, the dwarf-like household god, was chiefly a protector of whom?

Bes guarded mothers and children, warding off evil at childbirth; his grotesque image appears on beds, mirrors and the walls of temple birth-houses.

Khepri, the god of the morning sun, has the face of which creature?

Khepri has a scarab beetle for a face: the Egyptians likened the beetle rolling its dung ball to the sun being pushed across the sky.

The Egyptian Bennu bird may have inspired which creature of Greek legend?

The Bennu, a heron-like bird of Heliopolis titled 'He Who Came Into Being by Himself', is thought to be the model for the Greek phoenix.

Serket was the goddess of protection against the sting of which creature, shown on her head?

Serket wears a scorpion on her head; her full name, Serket-hetyt, 'she who causes the throat to breathe', refers to relief from its venom.

Wadjet, the cobra goddess, stood for which region of the united Two Lands?

Wadjet, the cobra, was the tutelary goddess of Lower Egypt and forms the uraeus on the royal crown; Nekhbet the vulture was her Upper Egyptian counterpart.

Neith, an early goddess of war and motherhood, had her main cult centre at which Delta city?

Neith's main temple stood at Sais in the western Delta; her emblem was crossed arrows on a shield, and the crocodile god Sobek was called her son.

Which god of the lotus and perfumes was the son of Ptah and Sekhmet?

Nefertem, the god of the blue lotus and perfume, completed the Memphite triad as the son of Ptah and Sekhmet.

Under which combined name was Amun worshipped as king of the gods from the New Kingdom?

Amun-Ra, the Theban god merged with the sun god, was hailed as king of the gods from the New Kingdom; his oracle at Siwa Oasis was consulted by Alexander the Great.

Which pharaoh made the sun disc the sole focus of state worship?

Akhenaten moved the capital to Amarna and made the Aten supreme; after his death Tutankhamun reopened the old temples and restored Amun.

How is the Aten depicted in Amarna-period art?

The word 'aten' originally just meant 'disc', anything flat and round.

Nephthys, sister-wife of Set, was paired with Isis in funerary rites in what role?

Nephthys and Isis, the 'two kites', mourned and guarded the dead as protectresses of the mummy; her name means 'Lady of the House'.

Heka, whose name is simply the Egyptian word for 'magic', was said to have existed since when?

Isis was sometimes titled Weret Hekau, 'Great Lady of Magic'.

Greek writers such as Plutarch identified Set with which monster of their own mythology?

Plutarch and other Greek writers equated Set with Typhon, the monstrous enemy of Zeus, when retelling the Osiris myth.

Imhotep, later deified as a god of medicine, was chancellor and possible pyramid architect to which king?

Imhotep served King Djoser of the Third Dynasty and is credited with designing his Step Pyramid at Saqqara; his healing cult grew only centuries later.

Min, whose cult centred on Coptos and Akhmim, is shown holding what in his upheld right hand?

Min is shown ithyphallic with his right arm raised holding a flail; Flinders Petrie dug up colossal early statues of him at Coptos (Qift) in the 1890s.

The jackal-headed embalmer god is associated with which other canine god, shown with grey or white fur?

Wepwawet, 'opener of the ways', is the grey or white canine god of Asyut, distinguished from the black-coated Anubis.

Osiris is classically shown wearing which distinctive headdress while holding a crook and flail?

Osiris wears the atef, a tall white crown flanked by ostrich plumes, over a mummy-wrapped body with a pharaoh's false beard.

Which pungent gas is named after an Egyptian god whose Libyan temple stood near deposits of its salts?

Ammonia comes from sal ammoniac, the 'salt of Ammon', the Greek and Roman name for the god Amun. The gas itself was only christened in 1782, by a Swedish chemist.

Which leafy vegetable, eaten by men as an aphrodisiac, was sacred to the Egyptian fertility god Min?

Lettuce was offered to Min and then eaten by men hoping for potency. The tall Egyptian variety oozed a milky sap when rubbed, which is how it earned the reputation.

Which body part did Horus lose fighting Set, later healed and worn by Egyptians as a protective amulet?

An eye, torn out by Set and later made whole, became one of Egypt's commonest amulets for over two thousand years. Its injury and healing were likened to the moon's waning and waxing.

In later Egyptian art the goddess Bastet has the head of which animal, mummified by the thousand in her honour?

A cat was such a popular offering to Bastet that more than 200,000 mummified animals, most of them cats, were found in one cemetery at Beni Hasan in the late 1880s.

According to the Dream Stele, which monument promised a prince the throne if he cleared away the sand burying it?

The Great Sphinx, then buried to its shoulders, was revered as a form of Horus. Thutmose IV dug out its front paws and set up the granite stele between them.

Egyptian texts describe the gods as having bones of silver, hair of lapis lazuli and flesh made of what?

Gold was only the start: the same writings say the gods gave off a scent like the incense burned in temple rituals.

At which temple of Ramesses II does sunlight reach the inner statues twice a year, leaving only Ptah in darkness?

Abu Simbel was aligned so that dawn light strikes its sanctuary on two days a year, sparing Ptah, a god tied to the realm of the dead. In 1968 the whole complex was moved to higher ground.

Which looped cross, carried by gods in Egyptian art, was the sign used to write the Egyptian word for 'life'?

The ankh sign also spelled the Egyptian words for 'mirror' and 'bouquet', which shared its consonants. Egypt's Christians, the Copts, later adapted it as a form of the cross.

What kind of vehicle carried the Egyptian god Ra across the sky by day and through the underworld by night?

A boat, in fact two of them: the Mandjet, or morning-boat, carried him through the day, and the Mesektet, or evening-boat, took over at dusk.

Which conqueror crossed the desert to the oracle of Amun at Siwa, where he was declared the god's own son?

Alexander the Great later appeared on coins wearing the horns of Amun as a badge of his divinity. From then on he often spoke of the god as his true father.

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

Khonsu, spelled Khonshu by Marvel, was worshipped at Thebes as the son of Amun and Mut. His name is thought to echo the Moon's nightly trip across the sky.

Which Roman emperor founded an Egyptian city for his drowned companion Antinous, worshipped there as Osiris-Antinous?

Hadrian was sailing on the Nile with Antinous when the young man drowned in AD 130. The emperor had him declared a god, and the cult long outlived its founder.

Which vessels, wrongly named by early Egyptologists after a Greek sea captain, held the organs removed from a mummy?

Canopic jars owe their name to Canopus, a legendary helmsman said to have been worshipped in the form of a jar. None was made for the heart, which stayed in the body.

In Egyptian art Osiris, wrapped like a mummy from the chest down, is usually given skin of which colour?

Green was the colour of rebirth, fitting for a god who came back from death. Painters sometimes made him black instead, after the fertile soil of the Nile floodplain.

Which star did the Egyptians worship as the goddess Sopdet, bringer of their New Year?

Sirius reappeared at dawn just before the Nile's yearly flood, the event the whole farming year hung on. The Greeks knew the star's goddess as Sothis.

Which constellation did the Egyptians worship as the god Sah, husband of the star goddess Sopdet?

Orion was where a dead pharaoh was thought to travel, and Sah was later merged with Osiris himself.

The goddess Nekhbet hovers over the pharaoh in Egyptian art, wings spread and clutching a shen ring, as which bird?

A vulture, and one of the 'Two Ladies' who guarded the king alongside the cobra Wadjet. In the New Kingdom the pair appeared together on the headdresses kings were buried in.

Egyptian women are thought to have worn amulets of the goddess Heqet in childbirth, shaped like which animal?

A frog was an ancient Egyptian symbol of fertility, tied to the yearly flooding of the Nile. Heqet came to watch over the final stages of labour.

The Apis, chosen by its markings and worshipped at Memphis as an aspect of Ptah, was which animal?

A bull, picked out as a calf from the herds and installed in a temple. The tombs of more than sixty such animals were found in underground galleries at Saqqara.

What was the Egyptian paradise called, a land of islands where the blessed dead lived on for eternity under Osiris?

The Field of Reeds was pictured as an ideal version of the Nile Delta, with boundless reed beds for hunting and farming. Souls reached it only after passing a series of guarded gates.

What name is given to the rearing cobra worn on a pharaoh's headdress as a sign of divine authority?

The uraeus stood for the goddess Wadjet, so wearing it showed that she protected the king and backed his claim to the land.

Which Egyptian funeral rite, in which a priest touched a mummy with an adze, was meant to revive its senses?

Opening of the Mouth let the dead breathe, speak, see, eat and drink again. They needed a voice above all, to recite spells and plead their innocence before the gods.

What name is given to the small figurines buried in Egyptian tombs to do farm work for the dead in the afterlife?

Ushabtis carried inscriptions promising to answer when the gods summoned the dead to work, and many shoulder a hoe and a basket. One surviving receipt is for 401 of them.

Which hybrid god did Ptolemy I promote to unite his Greek and Egyptian subjects?

Serapis was shown in a blend of Greek and Egyptian styles, starting with the cult statue Ptolemy set up in Alexandria.

Which instrument, its frame said to echo Hathor's face and horns, did Egyptian priestesses play in the goddess's rites?

The sistrum was a rattle, and its Egyptian name, sesheshet, imitated the sound it made. It was also shaken to frighten away Set.

Which spells, carved inside royal tombs at Saqqara, are the earliest known body of Egyptian religious writing?

The Pyramid Texts go back to about 2400 BC. When they came to light in the 1880s, Egypt's veteran excavations chief refused to believe it: he had never seen writing inside a pyramid.

In Egyptian creation myths, what name was given to the dark primordial waters from which the first mound of land rose?

Nun did not vanish once the world was made: Egyptians pictured its ocean still surrounding the bubble in which all life exists.

In one Egyptian spell, a goddess has a snake bite the god Ra so that he will reveal what to her?

His true name carried incomparable power, and she offered to cure him only if he gave it up. Ra was older and greater than she was, so a trick was her way to win it.

In the myth of their contest for the throne, Horus and Set agreed to race in ships made of what?

Stone was the rule, but Horus cheated: he built his ship of wood and painted it to match. Set's sank, while his nephew's stayed afloat.

Some Egyptian creation texts say the first humans sprang from what, shed by the creator god in a moment of distress?

His tears, shed in weakness, were said to foreshadow the flawed nature and sorrowful lives of the people who sprang from them.

Which vast temple complex at Thebes, known to Egyptians as 'The Most Select of Places', was the chief home of Amun?

Karnak's Great Hypostyle Hall alone holds 134 massive columns arranged in 16 rows, in a precinct that is just one of the complex's four main parts.

Which Rick Riordan series follows siblings Carter and Sadie, young magicians who become hosts to Egyptian gods?

The Kane Chronicles makes its heroes descendants of two pharaohs, Narmer and Ramses the Great. Riordan based the pair on two siblings he had taught.

In which 1994 film do soldiers travel to a desert world ruled by an alien posing as Ra?

Stargate's Ra is an alien who came to Earth in ancient Egyptian times and possessed human bodies to prolong his life. A spin-off series, Stargate SG-1, later ran for ten seasons.

Which tall, tapering monuments, each cut from a single block, did Egyptians raise in pairs at temple entrances?

Obelisks stood for the god Ra, and conquerors prized them: Rome now holds thirteen ancient ones, more than any other city in the world.

Which Egyptian script, whose Greek name means 'sacred engraved letters', did its own users call 'words of gods'?

Hieroglyphs were last carved, as far as anyone knows, at the temple of Philae in AD 394, three years after a Roman emperor ordered every non-Christian temple closed.

Greek writers identified Neith, an Egyptian patron of weaving and war, with which goddess of their own?

Athena shared Neith's unusual pairing of the loom and the battlefield. As a creator, Neith was even said to reweave the world on her loom every day.

Copies of the Book of the Dead were usually written on scrolls of which material and placed in the coffin?

Papyrus scrolls were often illustrated with scenes of the owner's journey into the afterlife. Many were prefabricated in workshops, with gaps left for the name to be filled in later.

Meretseger, a serpent goddess tied to a pyramid-shaped peak near Thebes, watched over which royal burial ground?

The Valley of the Kings lies below el Qurn, 'The Horn', a peak whose outline may be why pharaohs chose the site. When the valley fell out of use, her worship ended too.

Greeks and Romans misread the child Horus's finger-to-mouth pose and made him, as Harpocrates, their god of what?

Silence was a misreading: in Egyptian art a finger at the mouth was simply the standard way of showing a child, taken from the written sign for 'child'.

Which Egyptian board game, buried with Tutankhamun, is played against an invisible opponent in the Book of the Dead?

Senet was already ancient by Tutankhamun's day: the oldest intact boards date to the Middle Kingdom, and graffiti hint that it was played in the Old Kingdom.

Which obscure Egyptian god, drawn like a cartoon ghost in one funerary scroll, became a Japanese internet meme?

Medjed is described in the Book of the Dead as one who shoots with his eyes yet is unseen. He has since turned up in Japanese video games and anime.

Which sacred object, standing for the first mound of creation, gave its name to the capstone of an Egyptian pyramid?

The benben marked the spot where the first rays of dawn were said to fall, and the pointed block crowning a pyramid was called a benbenet after it.

Which Delta city held the festival that Herodotus called Egypt's largest, drawing several hundred thousand pilgrims?

Bubastis was the home of the goddess Bastet, and its ruins now lie on the edge of the modern city of Zagazig.

From which temple of Hathor was a famous carved zodiac ceiling removed and taken to Paris in 1821?

Dendera's zodiac was installed in the royal library by Louis XVIII and reached the Louvre only in 1922. It had roofed the porch of a chapel of Osiris inside the temple.

The five extra days that closed the Egyptian year, outside its regular 30-day months, were known as what?

Birthdays of the gods began with that of Osiris on the first day. The period was still thought spiritually dangerous, and the pharaoh performed a rite called 'Pacifying Sekhmet' to get through it.

Which part of the Egyptian soul was pictured as a human-headed bird, free to fly out of the tomb?

The ba could leave the tomb and return to the mummy, and after death it was reunited with the ka, the person's vital essence.

Which city became the chief cult centre of Osiris, where an early royal tomb was reinterpreted as the god's own grave?

Abydos was first sacred to a local god, Khentiamentiu, whose name ended up as one of Osiris's titles. Pilgrims later took the tomb of King Djer for the god's burial place.

The crouching god Heh, a palm stem gripped in each hand, doubled as the Egyptian written sign for which number?

A million was as good as infinity to the Egyptians, so Heh was also called the god of millions of years. Notches on the palm stems he holds stood for years.

In Egyptian art the god Amun is usually recognised by a crown bearing which distinctive ornament?

Twin plumes mark Amun out. After the Amarna period painters also gave him blue skin, a sign of his links with air and the first creation.

Unlike almost every other Egyptian god, the dwarf god Bes is drawn in which unusual way in paintings and reliefs?

Facing straight out at the viewer, where other gods stand in profile, Bes looked ready to attack any approaching evil.