50 Fun Facts About Ra

At which Egyptian temple does the dawn sun reach the innermost shrine of its sun gods on two days a year?

Abu Simbel: around 22 February and 22 October the first rays run the whole length of the rock-cut temple, which was moved uphill in the 1960s to save it from the Aswan High Dam.

With which bird's head is Ra most commonly depicted?

A falcon, but only by day: for the journey through the underworld each night, Egyptian artists gave the sun god a different animal's head altogether.

What sits on top of Ra's head in his classic depiction?

A sun disc encircled by a cobra: the rearing snake, the uraeus, was the god's fierce protector, and pharaohs wore one on the brow for the same protection.

Ra's cult city, which the Greeks called Heliopolis, now lies beneath the suburbs of which modern city?

Cairo: the temple city the Egyptians called Iunu was once one of Egypt's great religious centres, yet almost nothing of it is left above ground.

Beside which pyramid was a cedar ship buried, perhaps to carry its king across the sky with Ra?

The Great Pyramid of Giza: Khufu's ship lay sealed in a pit beside it for some 4,500 years until 1954, when it was found virtually intact.

Which daughter of Ra personified truth, justice and cosmic order?

Ma'at rode in her father's barque, and every king's first duty was to uphold her, order itself, against the chaos that pressed in on Egypt.

Which animal's head did Ra take on the night boat through the underworld?

A ram: in tomb paintings of the night journey the sun god stands ram-headed in a cabin on deck, ringed by the coils of a protective serpent called Mehen.

Which giant serpent tried to stop Ra's boat every night?

Apophis could never be killed for good, so priests helped Ra along: they made wax models of the serpent, then spat on them, hacked them up and burned them.

Which god, elsewhere a villain, rode with Ra and overcame the serpent each night?

Set stood at the prow of the barque and drove his spear into the serpent: the god of storms and disorder was the one strong enough for the job.

Each dawn, Ra's return from the underworld was pictured as his rebirth from which sky goddess?

Nut was said to swallow the sun each evening, carry it through her star-covered body overnight and give birth to it again at dawn.

With which god did Ra merge each night in the depths of the underworld?

Osiris: in the deepest hour of the night the two became one, Ra as the soul and Osiris as the body, and the union gave the sun the strength to rise again.

Which god represented Ra as the rising sun?

Khepri, the scarab god: Egyptians watched dung beetles roll their balls along the ground and young ones crawl out as if self-made, and pictured a giant beetle pushing up the sun.

As the setting sun, Ra was identified with which creator god of Heliopolis?

Atum, the self-made creator, appears in the books of the underworld as an old man leaning on a stick: the sun grown old by evening.

Which vast temple complex at Thebes was the chief home of Amun-Ra?

Karnak: almost every pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty added to it, and its priests grew so rich that for a time they ruled southern Egypt themselves.

With which god was Ra merged as the sun 'of the two horizons'?

Horus: the pair became Ra-Horakhty, 'Ra who is Horus of the Two Horizons', and it is in this merged form that the sun god is most often shown in Egyptian art.

Which primeval mound rose from the waters of Nun at the start of creation?

The Benben, the first land to catch the light, gave its shape and its name to the benbenet, the capstone that crowned a pyramid.

From what flower did Ra emerge at the dawn of time in one version of the creation myth?

A lotus: the Egyptian water lily opens each morning and closes again at dusk, a daily rebirth that made it a fitting cradle for the newborn sun.

Which two deities were the first pair Ra created?

Shu and Tefnut, air and moisture: the lone creator made them from his own body, with no partner, and their children were the earth and the sky.

In Egyptian myth, humankind sprang from which part of Ra?

His tears: in one telling he wept when his lost children were brought back to him, and the first men and women sprang up where the drops fell.

Which goddess did Ra send as his Eye to punish humankind for plotting against him?

Sekhmet, the lioness who sent plagues, was also the patron of doctors: her priests were known as skilled healers, since the goddess who brought disease could take it away.

How did Ra stop his rampaging Eye from destroying humanity?

With beer dyed red to look like blood: she lapped it up and slept off her rage, and Egyptians marked the rescue each year with a festival of drinking.

Which goddess is said to behead the chaos serpent to protect Ra?

Bastet, the 'cat of Ra': papyri and tomb paintings show a cat slicing up the serpent with a knife, a scene also read as Ra himself in feline form.

Which goddess cheered the sulking Ra by baring herself until he laughed?

Hathor: insulted by another god, Ra had lain down and stopped ruling, and her cheeky display got him laughing and back to work, which kept the world running.

How did Isis force Ra to reveal his secret name?

With a snakebite only she could cure: she shaped the snake from dust and the old god's own spittle, so his magic could not touch its venom, then named her price.

Which sacred bull, an embodiment of Ra, had its cult at Heliopolis?

Mnevis was a living black bull kept at Heliopolis: his movements were read as oracles, and when he died he was embalmed and buried with full honours.

What name is given to the family of gods that Ra headed at Heliopolis?

The Ennead takes its name from the Greek for nine. Its priests' claim to first place was not accepted everywhere: Memphis and Thebes put their own gods at the top.

The Fifth Dynasty's open-air temples to Ra were built around an altar and which monument?

An obelisk: unlike Egypt's enclosed temples, these stood open to the sky, and offerings were made on an altar in full sunlight.

In Genesis, which Hebrew patriarch marries the daughter of a priest of On, Ra's holy city?

Joseph: Pharaoh gave him Asenath, daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, as his wife, along with an Egyptian name of his own, Zaphenath-Paneah.

Which title did Egypt's kings write before their birth name from the pyramid age onward?

Son of Ra: the title made every king the sun god's heir, and in time the god's name was also worked into the throne name each pharaoh took at his accession.

Which pharaoh closed the old gods' temples and built a new capital for his sun god?

Akhenaten, born Amenhotep IV, renamed himself for his god and aimed his reform above all at Amun; within a few years of his death Tutankhamun had reopened the old temples.

How did Amarna-age artists depict the Aten?

A disc whose rays end in human hands: in palace and tomb reliefs the little hands reach down towards the king and queen, as if the sun were touching them.

The Bennu, a sacred heron of Ra's city Heliopolis, may have inspired which legendary bird?

The phoenix: the Bennu stood for the sun's daily rebirth, and the people of Heliopolis told a Greek visitor of a sacred bird that came to them only once in 500 years.

Which queen justified ruling Egypt as pharaoh by claiming that the god Amun himself had fathered her?

Hatshepsut had the story carved in her temple: the god comes to her mother in the shape of the king, and the daughter they conceive is born to rule.

Egyptian texts give the aged Ra flesh of gold, bones of silver and hair of which precious stone?

Lapis lazuli: the description opens the Book of the Heavenly Cow, in which the old god, weary of plotting mankind, retires to the sky on the back of a cow.

Which author's Kane Chronicles send two siblings to wake the sleeping sun god Ra?

Rick Riordan: in the second book, The Throne of Fire, Carter and Sadie Kane hunt down the three parts of the Book of Ra to rouse the old god.

When Ra barred the sky goddess from giving birth on any day of the year, which god won her five extra days?

Thoth gambled with the moon for a share of its light and made five new days out of it, which is how the Egyptians explained a year of 365 days.

Which actor played Ra in the 2016 film Gods of Egypt?

Geoffrey Rush plays him steering a vast ship through the heavens, where every night he fights off a shadow beast that threatens to eat the world.

What put an end to the worship of Ra?

The rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire ended a cult some three thousand years old, one that had outlasted the pharaohs, the Persians and the Greeks.

In which 1990s film is Ra revealed to be a body-stealing alien?

Stargate: its Ra, played by Jaye Davidson of The Crying Game, is a dying alien who took a human host in ancient Egypt and rules a desert world of slaves.

Whose reed-boat expeditions of 1969 and 1970 are the subject of the 1972 documentary Ra?

Thor Heyerdahl named his papyrus boats after the sun god: the first Ra became waterlogged short of its goal, but Ra II crossed from Morocco to Barbados the next year.

Which Greek historian visited Ra's city of Heliopolis and called its priests the most learned in Egypt?

Herodotus went there in the fifth century BC to cross-check what the priests at Memphis had told him, because the temple of Heliopolis was famed for its records.

The akhet, the horizon Ra crossed at dawn and dusk, was written as a sun disc between two what?

Mountains: the sign shows the sun in the dip between two peaks, and the twin towers of an Egyptian temple gateway were built to mirror it.

What did Egyptian texts call humankind in relation to Ra?

The Cattle of Ra: the Book of Gates shows the god's herd as all four peoples the Egyptians knew, themselves, Levantines, Libyans and Nubians alike.

In Egyptian art, the skin of Amun-Ra was often painted which colour?

Blue, often read as a sign of his hidden nature: the god whose name meant the Hidden One became the one the poor and oppressed prayed to.

Which god, magic personified, sailed with Ra to help fend off the chaos serpent?

Heka: to the Egyptians magic was the force the creator had used to make the world, so its god stood guard in the sun boat every night.

In one Egyptian myth, how did the chaos serpent try to stop Ra's boat?

With a hypnotic stare: the serpent's gaze overwhelmed Ra and all his crew except one god, who broke the spell by driving a spear into its side.

In the myth of the Eye of Ra, the eye is also equated with which star whose rising heralded the Nile flood?

Sirius, the Egyptians' Sopdet: its first reappearance at dawn each summer came just before the Nile rose, so it marked the New Year as well as the flood.

In the 'Distant Goddess' myth, the runaway Eye of Ra rampages as a wild cat in which far-off lands?

Nubia or Libya, depending on the telling: another god is sent to coax her home, and her return was tied to the rising of the Nile and the New Year.

Amun, later fused with Ra, was originally identified with which natural force?

The wind: unseen but felt everywhere, it suited a god whose name meant 'the Hidden One', and only when he was joined with Ra did he gain a visible face in the sun.

Which conqueror crossed the desert to the oracle of Amun-Ra at Siwa and came away hailed as the god's son?

Alexander the Great made the detour in 331 BC, and after his death coins showed him wearing the curling horns of Zeus Ammon, the Greeks' name for Amun-Ra.