40 Fun Facts About Tefnut

The Egyptian goddess Tefnut usually appears as a woman with the head of which fierce animal?

A lioness marked Tefnut as dangerous as well as life-giving, and some images show her as the whole animal with no human body at all.

The name Tefnut may imitate the sound of which bodily act, the way her father made her in some myths?

Spitting is the best guess: the 'tef' in her name sounds like an Egyptian word for the act, and some creation texts say her father simply ejected her from his mouth.

When the lost Tefnut and her twin returned, the Egyptian creator god wept, and his tears became what?

The first humans sprang from those tears, a pun in Egyptian, where the words for 'tears' and 'people' sound almost alike.

Which Egyptian god of the air was both the twin brother and the husband of the goddess Tefnut?

Shu and Tefnut were the first divine couple, and every other god in their famous family descends from the pair.

In a well-known myth, the furious Tefnut abandons Egypt and storms off to which neighbouring land?

Nubia, the land up the Nile from Egypt, is where she fled in a rage after quarrelling with the sun god, and it took another god's coaxing to bring her home.

Tefnut Mons, a mountain named after Tefnut, lies on which planet, where mountains honour goddesses?

Venus has a 182-kilometre-wide Tefnut Mons because nearly all its mountains are named after goddesses from the world's mythologies.

Which Marvel series on Disney+, starring Oscar Isaac, includes a human avatar of the goddess Tefnut?

Moon Knight cast Hayley Konadu as Tefnut's avatar, one of several mortals who speak for Egyptian gods in the 2022 series.

In the Egyptian creation story, Tefnut personifies which element, the partner of her twin's dry air?

Moisture made Tefnut the goddess of dew and rain, and with her twin she formed the first pair of cosmic elements in the world.

Which Egyptian queen's famous tall blue crown may derive from a headdress linking royal women to Tefnut?

Nefertiti's crown, in the view of Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley, grew out of an older queen's plant-topped headdress that identified its wearer with Tefnut.

Which Egyptian god, in one tale disguised as a monkey, coaxed the raging Tefnut home with stories?

Thoth, the gods' messenger and peacemaker, won her round with a string of arguments, fables and hymns, his usual job when a goddess lost her temper.

Which son of Tefnut challenged his own father and then took Tefnut as his chief queen in one myth?

Geb, the earth god, resented his father for prising him apart from the sky goddess, so he drove the old god out and claimed his mother.

Which daughter of Tefnut became the Egyptian sky goddess, usually painted arching over the earth?

Nut is often painted as a woman covered in stars, her body bent over the world while her brother the earth lies beneath her.

Which self-created Egyptian god, who rose from chaos on the first mound, fathered Tefnut with no mother?

Atum was imagined as alone in the dark abyss at the start of time, so he had to produce his first two children entirely from his own body.

At which ancient city, now under a Cairo suburb, did the creator god bring Tefnut into being?

Heliopolis was Egypt's great centre of sun worship, and one of the oldest Egyptian spells sets the birth of Tefnut and her twin there.

Tefnut, her father, twin, children and grandchildren together make up which famous group of Egyptian gods?

The Ennead takes its name from the Greek for 'the nine', the number of gods in the family worshipped together as a group.

Which grandson of Tefnut became the Egyptian ruler of the dead after his own brother murdered him?

Osiris was one of the grandchildren born to Tefnut's daughter, and his death and revival became Egypt's central story of the afterlife.

Which granddaughter of Tefnut, famed for her magic, brought her murdered husband back to life?

Isis outgrew the rest of the family: her worship later spread from Egypt throughout the Greek and Roman world.

Which falcon-headed god, who avenged his murdered father, was the great-grandson of the goddess Tefnut?

Horus the Younger sits four generations below the creator, and each living pharaoh came to be seen as his earthly form.

Tefnut was one of several fierce goddesses who could act as which roving, fiery agent of the sun god?

The Eye of Ra was imagined as a goddess in her own right, a daughter the sun god could send out to burn up his enemies.

Tefnut's motherless birth is told in which Old Kingdom writings, carved inside royal tombs at Saqqara?

The Pyramid Texts are Egypt's oldest funerary writings, spells meant to lift a dead king to the sky, and two of them tell how Tefnut was made.

Tefnut's wig is usually topped by a uraeus, the royal brow emblem shaped like which creature?

A cobra, reared up and ready to strike, was Egypt's sign of royal and divine authority, worn on the crowns of kings as well as gods.

Which queen, grandmother of Tutankhamun, wore a plant-topped headdress tying her to a form of Tefnut?

Tiye was shown in a low, flat crown sprouting plants, the same headdress Tefnut herself wore in the art of the period.

Which cow-horned goddess of love and music was fused with Tefnut in a double name found in Egyptian texts?

Hathor-Tefnut is one of many blended names in Egyptian texts, joining two goddesses who were both called daughters of the sun god.

Which goddess, once sent to slaughter mankind, shared Tefnut's role as the sun god's raging daughter?

Sekhmet was only stopped when beer dyed red was poured out for her: she drank it as blood and became too drunk to go on.

Priests at Thebes fused Tefnut with which goddess, the wife of Amun, in a local double-named form?

Mut, whose name simply means 'mother', also stars in one late version of the wandering goddess tale before becoming Tefnut again at the end.

At which vast temple complex in ancient Thebes was Tefnut invoked in prayers for the pharaoh's health?

Karnak, the sprawling temple city near modern Luxor, called on Tefnut as one of a family of gods to keep the king well.

To ward off enemies, Tefnut could bear a title naming her the 'mistress of' which destructive force?

The flame fits her fiercer side as the sun god's fiery defender, and in this role she was shown adorned with fire as a shield against enemies.

In a ritual honouring Tefnut, the pharaoh clubbed a ball that stood for part of which chaos serpent?

Apep was the giant snake and great enemy of the sun god, who had to beat him every night, so striking the ball replayed that victory.

Tefnut was one of the few old gods apparently tolerated under which pharaoh's cult of the sun disk?

Akhenaten swept aside most of Egypt's gods for the Aten, yet his new faith appears to have kept a place for Tefnut and her twin.

In a late Egyptian tale, the runaway Tefnut first roams a far-off land in the shape of which animal?

A cat was her calmer shape: when the messenger sent to fetch her said the wrong thing, she turned into something far fiercer and gave him a fright.

Which hunter god, whose name means 'one who leads back the distant one', was merged with Tefnut's twin?

Onuris earned the name by fetching his own bride home from a far country, the same plot as the tale of Tefnut's return.

Egyptian coffin spells closely link Tefnut with which goddess of truth, who wears an ostrich feather?

Maat stood for order and harmony in the cosmos, a role the spells extend to Tefnut as the mother of every god who came after her.

One theory ties the name Tefnut to the Egyptian word 'tefen', which may describe what kind of child?

An orphan suits a goddess with no mother, and one ancient spell pairs 'the orphan' with 'the orphaness' as a play on her name.

Which Nile temple, half of it Sobek's, honoured 'the Good Sister', sometimes seen as a form of Tefnut?

Kom Ombo is split down the middle for two sets of gods, and the Good Sister, Tasenetnofret, belonged to the falcon god's half.

After their creation, Tefnut and her twin drifted away into which dark primeval ocean of Egyptian myth?

Nun was the endless abyss that existed before the world, and the twins had to be fetched back from it by a messenger of their father.

The folk tale of Tefnut's return survives in which Egyptian script, the middle text on the Rosetta Stone?

Demotic was the everyday script of late Egypt, and the tale written in it has the goddess won over by a string of arguments and fables.

The zigzag hieroglyph for 'n' in the name Tefnut is a picture of which natural thing?

Rippling water is what the sign shows, though in her name it only spells the sound 'n', one of the four sound signs that write t-f-n-t.

A temple where a queen was worshipped as a form of Tefnut stands at Sedeinga, in which modern country?

Sudan holds the ruins, raised by a pharaoh for his wife a short way from his own temple at Soleb.

Tefnut and her twin shared a cult at which Nile Delta city, now the mound of Tell el-Muqdam?

Leontopolis is the name the Greeks gave the town, and under Greek and Roman rule it slowly pushed the older Egyptian name out of use.

Temples of Tefnut and kindred goddesses often had a sacred lake, the isheru, laid out in which shape?

A horseshoe was the usual plan, with the lake wrapping three sides of the temple, and myth said a raging goddess was cooled and calmed in it.