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 50 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
He was 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
His black colouring symbolised regeneration and the fertile soil of the Nile, not death.
Q 03Which bird's head does Horus, god of kingship and the sky, most often wear?
A falcon
The living pharaoh was regarded as a manifestation of Horus.
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
She was usually shown wearing a throne-shaped hieroglyph on her head, and later borrowed Hathor's cow-horn sun disk.
Q 06Set, the murderer of Osiris, was god of deserts, storms and what else?
Disorder and violence
He was not purely evil: he stood in Ra's boat each night to fight off the chaos serpent Apep.
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
A tree grows around it, and the local king has the tree cut down and turned 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 delay is largely because the judge, the creator god, favours 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
His name comes from a verb meaning 'to complete', and he was linked with the evening sun.
Q 12Nut, the sky goddess, is usually depicted how?
As a star-covered woman arching over the Earth
She was sometimes shown as a cow instead; her brother-husband is the earth god Geb.
Q 13The Egyptians believed the laughter of which god caused earthquakes?
Geb
He was the earth god, feared as the father of snakes, and never received a temple of his own.
Q 21In the Amduat, how many underworld regions are there, one per hour of Ra's night journey?
Twelve
His rays revived the dead in each region as he passed, and they slept again once he had gone.
Q 22What was the Egyptian name for the underworld realm the dead passed through?
The Duat
It appears in the Book of Gates, the Book of Caverns, the Coffin Texts 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
The German Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius coined 'Todtenbuch' in 1842.
Q 14Shu, the god of air, was said to do what after the First Occasion?
Separate the earth from the sky
He was the dry air standing between his children Geb and Nut.
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
Late texts give the males frogs' heads and the 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
He was originally the god of the Nile cataract who regulated the annual flood.
Q 19Which giant serpent, the enemy of Ra, embodied chaos and darkness?
Apep
Some descriptions gave him a head of flint and a length of 16 yards; the Greeks called him Apophis.
Q 20Ra travelled by night through the underworld in which form?
As a ram
By day he was falcon-headed on the Mandjet barque, switching to the Mesektet for the night voyage.
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
They were the three largest man-eating animals the Egyptians knew, so no one could escape her.
Q 26Maat's ideological opposite, meaning injustice, chaos and violence, was called what?
Isfet
Her masculine counterpart was Thoth, who is sometimes called her husband.
Q 27The four sons of Horus guarded the canopic jars. Which organ did the baboon-headed Hapy protect?
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 29The cat goddess of Bubastis was originally worshipped in what form?
A lioness
She and Sekhmet came to be seen as the gentle and warlike aspects of one goddess.
Q 30Herodotus said Egypt's most popular festival was held at Bubastis in honour of which goddess?
Bastet
The temple there was surrounded by water on three sides, forming a sacred lake called an isheru.