Ancient Egypt
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This Egypt trivia quiz has 143 free questions with answers and starts where most people expect: pharaohs, pyramids, gods and mummies. You'll meet Khufu, Hatshepsut, Akhenaten and Cleopatra, work out what a canopic jar held and why the heart stayed in the body, and find out which stone finally unlocked hieroglyphs. If you can name the crocodile god or the board game buried with the dead, you'll do well. Then it keeps going into the Egypt of the last two centuries, which most trivia pages skip. Who dug the Suez Canal, who nationalised it, and which ship wedged itself across it in 2021? What did the Free Officers do in 1952, what happened in Tahrir Square in 2011, and which Alexandria-born actor was nominated for an Oscar? There are questions on Cairo, Coptic Christians, koshari, the flag, the Pharaohs' record run of Africa Cup of Nations titles and Mo Salah's move to Liverpool. Every one of the 82 answers has been checked against a reference page before publication, so what you get right is genuinely right. Play free, one question at a time, and share your score with the friend who thinks they know Egypt better.
30 of 143 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What formal writing system was used in ancient Egypt for monumental inscriptions and religious texts?
Hieroglyphs
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.
Q 02Which major river was crucial to the development and sustenance of ancient Egyptian civilization?
Nile
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.
Q 03What was a central belief in ancient Egyptian religion regarding what happened after death?
A journey to an eternal afterlife
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.
Q 04Which pharaoh is traditionally credited with commissioning the Great Pyramid of Giza?
Khufu
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.
Q 05Which jackal-headed ancient Egyptian god oversaw mummification and guided souls to the underworld?
Anubis
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.
Q 06Which female New Kingdom pharaoh built a mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahari?
Hatshepsut
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.
Q 07Which scholar announced in 1822 that he had worked out how to read Egypt's ancient scripts?
Jean-François Champollion
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.
Q 08Which Upper Egyptian city, home of the Karnak and Luxor temples, was long Egypt's capital after the pyramid age?
Thebes
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.
Q 09The double crown combined Upper Egypt's white crown with Lower Egypt's crown of which colour?
Red
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.
Q 10In Plutarch's telling, which Roman general did Egypt's last queen reach by hiding in a bed sack?
Julius Caesar
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.
Q 11Egypt's great river flows northward and empties into which body of water?
Mediterranean Sea
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'.
Q 12Which natural salt did embalmers pack around a body to dry it during mummification?
Natron
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.
Q 13Which pharaoh's tomb, discovered in 1922, was found largely intact with its vast treasures?
Tutankhamun
The discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb by Howard Carter provided an unprecedented look into the wealth and burial practices of ancient Egyptian royalty.
Q 21The 18th Dynasty woman who ruled as king sent a trading expedition for myrrh trees to which land?
Punt
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.
Q 22What famous artifact, discovered in 1799, gave scholars the key to reading ancient Egypt's lost scripts?
Rosetta Stone
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.
Q 23Ancient Egyptian bread was made almost exclusively from which variety of grain?
Emmer
Emmer was harder to mill than other wheats, and grit from the grinding stones wore down Egyptian teeth, as their mummies show.
Q 14Which Egyptian goddess was depicted with the head of a domestic cat?
Bastet
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.
Q 15What massive structures were primarily built as tombs for pharaohs and other high-ranking officials?
Pyramids
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.
Q 16What writing material did Egyptian scribes use for their scrolls of letters, accounts and sacred texts?
Papyrus
Papyrus came from the pith of a wetland sedge, sliced, layered crosswise and pressed; the word gave us 'paper'.
Q 17During which historical period were the Great Pyramids of Giza primarily constructed?
Old Kingdom
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.
Q 18Which god, shown as a mummified king, was revered as ruler of the dead and the underworld?
Osiris
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.
Q 19What process did Egyptians use to preserve bodies for the afterlife?
Mummification
Mummification mattered because Egyptians believed the dead could only be reborn if the body survived intact; the full process took about 70 days.
Q 20Which Egyptian sun god, shown with a falcon's head beneath a sun disk, sailed across the sky by day?
Ra
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.
Q 24What protective symbol, a rearing cobra, was frequently seen on the headdresses of pharaohs?
Uraeus
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.
Q 25Which pharaoh built a new capital at Amarna and devoted it to the worship of a single sun disk?
Akhenaten
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.
Q 26What were the special containers used to hold the internal organs removed during mummification called?
Canopic jars
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.
Q 27In ancient Egyptian art, what color was frequently used to symbolize life, growth, and resurrection?
Green
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.
Q 28Which animal was sacred to Thoth, the god of writing, who was usually shown with its head?
Ibis
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.
Q 29The word 'pharaoh' comes from per-aa, 'great house', which originally named what?
The royal palace
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.
Q 30Which Old Kingdom king, crowned as a child of six, is traditionally credited with Egypt's longest reign, over 90 years?
Pepi II
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.