Horus Trivia
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50 free Horus trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Horus trivia quiz covers one of ancient Egypt's most important gods, the falcon-headed lord of the sky and kingship whom every living pharaoh was believed to embody. The easy questions handle the basics: the bird he took the form of, his mother and father, the uncle who murdered Osiris, the famous protective eye symbol and the Greek god the Egyptians equated him with. From there it moves through the myths themselves: Isis hiding in the Delta marshes, the eighty-year contest with Set, the lettuce trick, the boat race won with a boat of painted wood, and the eye that Set tore out and Thoth or Hathor healed. The harder half is for lovers of Egyptology: the many forms of Horus from Heru-ur to Harpocrates, the Horus name and the serekh that predates the cartouche, Nekhen and the Narmer Palette, the winged sun of Edfu, the Festival of Victory with its harpooned hippo, the Chester Beatty papyrus, the four sons and their canopic jars, Hathor's 'House of Horus' name and Ra-Horakhty. If you enjoyed our Egyptian mythology or ancient Egypt quizzes, this is the deep dive on the falcon. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries for Horus, the Eye of Horus, Set, Isis, Edfu and the related deities and artefacts before publishing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Egyptologists think the falcon shown as Horus was most likely a lanner or which other species?
A peregrine
A peregrine: either falcon suits a sky god whose name is thought to mean 'the distant one' or 'the one who is above'.
Q 02Besides being husband and wife, how were Horus's parents Isis and Osiris related?
Brother and sister
Brother and sister: both were children of the sky goddess Nut, and Plutarch wrote that the pair fell in love before they were born, inside their mother's womb.
Q 03Set, the uncle who fought Horus for Egypt's throne, was the god of what?
Deserts and storms
Deserts and storms: Egyptians gave Set the barren Red Land beyond the Nile's fields, yet he was also shown at the prow of the sun god's boat, spearing the serpent Apep.
Q 04In the Papyrus of Hunefer, Horus leads the dead scribe to Osiris after his heart is weighed against what?
A feather
A feather: it stood for Maat, the goddess of truth, and a heart that outweighed it was thrown to Ammit, the 'Devourer', ending its owner's hope of an afterlife.
Q 05What was the ancient Egyptian word for the Eye of Horus symbol?
Wedjat
Wedjat means the 'whole' or 'sound' eye; because the eye was restored after Set's attack, its image became one of Egypt's most popular protective amulets.
Q 06Which Greek god did the ancient Greeks identify with Horus?
Apollo
Apollo: the Greeks even renamed Edfu, the home of Horus's great temple, Apollonopolis, meaning 'city of Apollo'.
Q 07Which famous artefact was found at Nekhen, the early cult centre of Horus?
The Narmer Palette
The Narmer Palette: carved about 3100 BC, it shows the king raising his mace over a kneeling enemy while the Horus falcon above holds a second captive for him.
Q 08Which funerary writings of about 2400 to 2300 BC describe the pharaoh as Horus in life and Osiris in death?
The Pyramid Texts
The Pyramid Texts: carved inside royal tombs at Saqqara, they made each reign a relay, with the dead king joining Osiris while his successor took over as the new Horus.
Q 09Where did the pregnant Isis flee to hide from Set before giving birth to Horus?
The Nile Delta marshlands
The Nile Delta marshlands: Isis hid in a thicket at a spot the Greeks called Khemmis, because Set saw her unborn child as a threat to his hold on the throne.
Q 10In one tale, which part of Horus's dismembered father was never recovered because a fish had eaten it?
His penis
His penis: Plutarch says this is why Egyptians avoided eating certain Nile fish, and that Isis shaped a replacement; Egyptian accounts have the organ found intact.
Q 11In their long struggle Horus lost an eye, but what did his rival Set lose?
A testicle
A testicle: Egyptian texts have Horus tear away Set's testicles, a wound read as the loss of his virility and strength, and in some versions both gods are later healed.
Q 12In The Contendings of Horus and Seth, which food does Isis secretly taint with her son's seed to trick Set?
Lettuce
Lettuce: Set's gardener told Isis it was the only vegetable he ate there, and when the gods later called the seed to testify it answered from inside Set, sinking his claim.
Q 13What did Horus bring to his race of stone boats against Set?
A wooden boat coated in plaster
Q 21The stylized eye that stands for the Eye of Horus could also stand for the fierce 'Eye' of which other god?
Ra
Ra: his Eye was pictured as a goddess, and in one myth she comes close to wiping out humankind until he tricks her into drinking beer dyed red like blood.
Q 22Where did Egyptian sailors often paint the Eye of Horus?
On the bows of their boats
On the bows of their boats: the eye was meant to guard the vessel and let it see its way, and the eyes still painted on Mediterranean boats may descend from the custom.
Q 23What was the Greek name for Horus the Child, Heru-pa-khered?
Harpocrates
Harpocrates: Greeks and Romans misread his finger-to-mouth pose, an Egyptian sign of childhood, as a call for hush and made him their god of silence and secrets.
A wooden boat coated in plaster: it passed for stone and floated while Set's real stone boat sank, yet the win settled nothing and the eighty-year court case dragged on.
Q 14Which occultist claimed that a new age he called the 'Aeon of Horus' began in 1904?
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley: on honeymoon in Cairo that year he wrote down The Book of the Law, which he said a supernatural voice had dictated to him over three days.
Q 15In the Memphite Theology, which god, Set's own father, first splits Egypt between Set and Horus and then gives Horus it all?
Geb
Geb: the text says it 'seemed wrong' to him that Horus's share should only equal Set's, so he handed Horus the whole inheritance as the son of his firstborn son.
Q 16Which Dublin-held 20th Dynasty manuscript preserves The Contendings of Horus and Seth?
Chester Beatty Papyrus I
Chester Beatty Papyrus I is named for Alfred Chester Beatty, an American mining millionaire who moved to Dublin with his manuscripts in 1950 and left the collection to the Irish nation.
Q 17Which god is most often credited with restoring the Eye of Horus that Set destroyed?
Thoth
Thoth: in Egyptian myth he seeks out the injured eye and heals it, and one medical text invokes him as 'Thoth, the physician of the Eye of Horus'.
Q 18In one tale, Hathor finds Horus blinded in the desert and heals his eyes with the milk of which animal?
A gazelle
A gazelle: Set had torn out both eyes and buried them on a mountainside, and once the milk had healed them Hathor went to tell the sun god that Horus could see again.
Q 19Egyptians saw the wounding and healing of the Eye of Horus played out in the sky by which heavenly body?
The moon
The moon: Egyptians spoke of 'filling' the injured eye, the same picture as a thin crescent filling out, night by night, into a full disc.
Q 20Egyptologists long believed hieroglyphs for pieces of the Eye of Horus stood for what in Egyptian mathematics?
Fractions
Fractions: the pupil was read as 1/4 and the eyebrow as 1/8 of a grain measure, but a 2002 study challenged the theory, finding that the oldest signs look least like parts of an eye.
Q 24At Edfu, a granite falcon of Horus shelters a small figure thought to be which child at Cleopatra's court?
Caesarion
Caesarion: the falcon is thought to shelter her son by Julius Caesar, who shared her throne as a small child and was put to death at 17 once Octavian took Egypt.
Q 25Which god shares the unusual double temple at Kom Ombo with Horus the Elder?
Sobek
Sobek: he has the southern half and Horus the Elder the northern, so everything from the entrances to the sanctuaries is built twice, side by side.
Q 26Which famous monument did New Kingdom Egyptians worship as Har-em-akhet, 'Horus in the Horizon'?
The Great Sphinx of Giza
The Great Sphinx of Giza: it was already about a thousand years old, and Thutmose IV set a stele between its paws telling how the god offered him the throne for clearing its sand.
Q 27Which emblem of Horus was carved above the gateways of temples all over Egypt?
A winged sun disc
A winged sun disc: it stood for Horus of Behdet, the form in which the god was shown hovering over the king as his protector.
Q 28The Temple of Horus at Edfu, one of Egypt's best preserved, was built by which dynasty between 237 and 57 BC?
The Ptolemies
The Ptolemies: Cleopatra's dynasty built it, and it survives almost whole because sand buried it nearly to its column tops until Auguste Mariette began digging it out in 1860.
Q 29Carvings show Horus and Set knotting two plants together to unite Egypt: the southern lily and which northern plant?
Papyrus
Papyrus: it stood for Lower Egypt, and the knot, called sema-tawy or 'uniting the Two Lands', shows the two great rivals pulling together for once.
Q 30Each year a statue of Hathor sailed up the Nile to visit Horus at Edfu, setting out from which temple?
Dendera
Dendera: the statue's voyage ended in the fourteen-day Festival of the Beautiful Reunion, which many Egyptologists read as a ritual marriage of the two gods.