Egyptian Mythology Trivia
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100 free Egyptian Mythology trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free Egyptian Mythology trivia questions with answers. Falcon heads, jackal heads, a hippo-lion-crocodile who eats the hearts of the unworthy. This quiz covers the gods and myths of ancient Egypt: the Heliopolitan Ennead from Atum down to Osiris and Set, the Osiris myth and Isis's search for the pieces, the eighty-year contest between Horus and Set, Ra's nightly voyage through the Duat and his fight with the serpent Apep, the weighing of the heart from the Book of the Dead, and the animal-headed gods from Anubis and Thoth to Bastet, Sobek and Taweret. Fifty questions run from beginner to Egyptologist. The easy questions ask which god has a jackal's head and what Ra is the god of; the hard ones want the city where Osiris's coffin washed ashore, the frog-and-serpent-headed Ogdoad of Hermopolis, which organ each of the four sons of Horus guarded, and the beer trick that stopped Sekhmet's massacre. It suits students, mythology fans and anyone who has stood in front of a papyrus in a museum and wondered who is who. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the individual gods, myths and texts, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Ra, one of the most important gods by the Fifth Dynasty, was primarily the god of what?
The Sun
Ra was the sun god, thought to sail across the sky each day in a solar barque and through the underworld each night.
Q 02Which god of funerary rites and embalming is usually shown as a man with a canine head?
Anubis
Anubis, the jackal-headed god of embalming, was painted black to symbolise regeneration and the Nile's fertile soil, not death.
Q 03Which bird's head does Horus, god of kingship and the sky, most often wear?
A falcon
Horus is shown as a falcon or a falcon-headed man; the living pharaoh was regarded as his earthly manifestation.
Q 04Which god of writing, wisdom and the Moon is depicted with the head of an ibis or a baboon?
Thoth
The Greeks equated him with Hermes, and his title 'thrice great' became Hermes Trismegistus.
Q 05Which goddess resurrects her slain brother and husband Osiris and protects their heir Horus?
Isis
Isis, usually crowned with a throne hieroglyph, revived Osiris long enough to conceive Horus and hid the boy in the Delta marshes.
Q 06Set, the murderer of Osiris, was god of deserts, storms and what else?
Disorder and violence
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.
Q 07Which part of Osiris's dismembered body did Isis fail to recover?
His genitalia
She wrapped what she found, making him one of the first figures linked to the mummy wrap.
Q 08In the Osiris myth, the chest containing Osiris's body floats out to sea and washes up at which city?
Byblos
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.
Q 09According to the myth, how long does the dispute between Horus and Set over the throne drag on?
Eighty years
The Contendings of Horus and Set says the trial dragged on for eighty years, largely because the presiding sun god favoured Set.
Q 10What is the Ennead?
Nine deities worshipped at Heliopolis
It runs from Atum through Shu and Tefnut, Geb and Nut, down to Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys.
Q 11Which primordial god created himself and then fathered Shu and Tefnut, the first divine couple?
Atum
Atum, whose name relates to a verb meaning 'to complete', created himself from the primeval waters and was linked with the evening sun.
Q 12Nut, the sky goddess, is usually depicted how?
As a star-covered woman arching over the Earth
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.
Q 13The Egyptians believed the laughter of which god caused earthquakes?
Geb
Geb, the earth god and father of Osiris, was said to shake the ground with his laughter; snakes were regarded as his children.
Q 21Into how many regions does the Amduat divide Ra's nightly journey through the underworld?
Twelve
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.
Q 22What was the Egyptian name for the underworld realm the dead passed through?
The Duat
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.
Q 23What did the ancient Egyptians actually call the text we know as the Book of the Dead?
Spells of Coming Forth by Day
Q 14Shu, the god of air, was said to do what after the First Occasion?
Separate the earth from the sky
Shu separated the earth from the sky, standing as the dry air between his children Geb (earth) and Nut (sky).
Q 15Tefnut's name may be an onomatopoeia for which act by Atum in the creation myth?
Spitting
In late texts her name was even written with a mouth spitting.
Q 16The Ogdoad were eight primordial deities worshipped at which city?
Hermopolis
The Ogdoad were the eight primordial gods of Hermopolis; late texts give the four males frogs' heads and the four females serpents' heads.
Q 17Ptah, the creator god of Memphis, brought the world into being by what means?
The creative power of speech
The Shabaka Stone says he gave life to all the gods 'through this heart and this tongue'.
Q 18Which god fashioned human bodies from clay on a potter's wheel and placed them in their mothers' wombs?
Khnum
Khnum, worshipped at Elephantine by the First Cataract, shaped each person on his potter's wheel and was credited with controlling the Nile flood.
Q 19Which giant serpent, the enemy of Ra, embodied chaos and darkness?
Apep
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.
Q 20Ra travelled by night through the underworld in which form?
As a ram
Ra travelled the underworld at night as a ram-headed god aboard the Mesektet barque, after crossing the sky by day in the Mandjet.
The Egyptians called it the Spells (or Book) of Coming Forth by Day; the German Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius coined 'Todtenbuch' in 1842.
Q 24In the Weighing of the Heart, the dead person's heart was weighed against what?
Maat, often as an ostrich feather
The scene comes from Spell 125 of the Book of the Dead.
Q 25Ammit, who devoured hearts that failed the judgement, combined the parts of which three animals?
Lion, hippopotamus and crocodile
Ammit had a crocodile's head, a lion's forequarters and a hippopotamus's hindquarters, the three largest man-eaters the Egyptians knew.
Q 26Maat's ideological opposite, meaning injustice, chaos and violence, was called what?
Isfet
Isfet, meaning injustice, chaos and violence, was the opposite of Maat; the pharaoh's duty was to uphold Maat and repel Isfet.
Q 27Which organ did the baboon-headed Hapy, one of the four sons of Horus, guard?
The lungs
Baboon-headed Hapy guarded the lungs; Imsety (human) had the liver, Duamutef (jackal) the stomach and Qebehsenuef (falcon) the intestines.
Q 28How did Ra's daughter Sekhmet come to abandon her massacre of humanity?
She drank red beer she took for blood
She got so drunk she gave up the slaughter and went peacefully back to Ra.
Q 29In what form was the goddess Bastet originally worshipped?
A lioness
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.
Q 30Which goddess of writing and measurement was shown with a seven-pointed emblem above her head?
Seshat
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.