Osiris Trivia
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50 free Osiris trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Osiris trivia quiz covers the green-skinned god of the dead from every angle: his family — Geb and Nut, Isis, Set, Nephthys and Horus — the murder and dismemberment, Isis's search and the missing piece, the crook, flail and atef crown, and the meaning of titles like Khenti-Amentiu and Wenennefer. It also digs into how the Egyptians honoured him: the Pyramid Texts, the Ikhernofret Stela and the five-day festival at Abydos, the djed raised in Khoiak, Osiris beds and wheat-paste cakes, the ram of Mendes, the 42 judges and Ammit, and the god's afterlives as Ptah-Seker-Osiris, Serapis and, eventually, a NASA asteroid mission. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference and each question carries its citation. Enjoy this one? Try our Isis, Anubis, Horus and Egyptian Mythology quizzes next.
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Q 01In the judgement before Osiris, the heart of a dead person was weighed against what?
A feather
A feather. The ostrich plume stood for truth and right order, so a heart heavy with wrongdoing tipped the scales and its owner lost the afterlife.
Q 02How was Set, the god who murdered Osiris, related to his victim?
His brother
His brother. Set coveted the throne of Egypt and seized it, and the feud passed down a generation when the dead king's son grew up to fight him for it.
Q 03Isis, who searched Egypt for the body of Osiris, was his wife and also his what?
His sister
His sister. She gathered the scattered pieces of his body, and her magic revived him just long enough to conceive the son who would avenge him.
Q 04In the Greek version of the myth, which part of Osiris's body did Isis fail to recover?
His genitalia
His genitalia. Fish in the Nile had eaten them, the Greek telling says, so Isis made a replica; Egyptian accounts have the body recovered whole.
Q 05Who was Osiris's posthumously conceived son?
Horus
Horus. Isis hid with him in the marshes of the Nile delta until he was grown, and he then fought Set for his father's throne and won it.
Q 06Who were the parents of Osiris?
Geb and Nut
Geb and Nut. Egyptian art shows the sky goddess arched over the earth god lying beneath her, the two held apart by their father Shu, the air.
Q 07Which Mozart opera includes the solemn prayer 'O Isis und Osiris'?
The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute. The high priest Sarastro sings it before Prince Tamino's trials of initiation, part of an allegory built on the Freemasonry that Mozart and his librettist shared.
Q 08Which two objects does Osiris hold in his crossed hands?
A crook and a flail
A crook and a flail. Egypt's kings carried the same pair as emblems of their rule, and Tutankhamun was buried with crooks and flails of his own.
Q 09What did the green skin often given to Osiris in Egyptian art signify?
Rebirth
Rebirth. Green was the colour of sprouting crops, and when artists painted him black instead it recalled the fertile mud left behind by the Nile flood.
Q 10How is Osiris's body typically shown from the chest down?
Wrapped like a mummy
Wrapped like a mummy. In the myth his restored body is the first to be embalmed, and pharaohs were later prepared for burial to resemble him.
Q 11What does Khenti-Amentiu, a title of Osiris as ruler of the dead, mean?
Foremost of the Westerners
Foremost of the Westerners. Egyptians tied the west to death, so the 'westerners' were the dead, and the title is usually thought to have belonged first to an older god whose cult Osiris absorbed.
Q 12Osiris belonged to the group of nine gods worshipped at Heliopolis, known by what name?
The Ennead
The Ennead. The name is Greek for 'the nine', a divine family tree that starts with the sun god Atum, who brought the first pair of gods into being alone.
Q 13Which Old Kingdom writings contain the earliest allusions to the Osiris myth?
The Pyramid Texts
Q 21What was the 'Osiris bed' found in Tutankhamun's tomb?
A god-shaped tray of soil sown with seed
A god-shaped tray of soil sown with seed. Sealed in the tomb, the grain sprouted in the outline of the god, a picture of life rising out of death.
Q 22Which pillar symbol, seen as the backbone of Osiris, was ritually raised at his festival?
The djed
The djed. The pharaoh himself, helped by priests, hauled a wooden pillar upright with ropes, an act that stood for the dead god rising again.
Q 23On which Nile island did the temple of Isis, where Osiris was also worshipped, stay open until Justinian ordered it shut?
Philae
The Pyramid Texts. Carved inside royal burial chambers, the spells only ever allude to the murder: Egyptians feared that writing an evil down could make it real.
Q 14Which Greek essayist's account has Set conspiring with 72 accomplices?
Plutarch
Plutarch. His On Isis and Osiris is the fullest ancient telling of the story, yet he wrote it in Greek for Greeks, and parts of it match nothing in the Egyptian record.
Q 15In the Greek version, where did the chest containing Osiris's body wash up?
Byblos
Byblos. A tree grew up around the chest and the local king had it cut down for a palace pillar, with the dead god still sealed inside, until Isis came to claim it.
Q 16How did Set lure Osiris into the chest, in the Greek telling?
By offering it to whoever it fitted
By offering it to whoever it fitted. He had secretly measured Osiris and built the chest to his size, so at the banquet every other guest tried it in vain.
Q 17By what Greek name is Set known in the Greek retelling of the myth?
Typhon
Typhon. Greek writers matched Set, the god of storms and disorder, with the most monstrous enemy of the gods in their own myths.
Q 18In the fight to avenge Osiris, which part of his son's body did Set injure?
An eye
An eye. Another god healed it, and the restored eye, known as the wedjat, became one of the most common protective amulets in Egypt.
Q 19According to Diodorus Siculus, what did Osiris teach the Egyptians to abandon?
Cannibalism
Cannibalism. Once Isis had discovered wheat and barley, Diodorus says, people gladly changed their diet, and Osiris set off to teach the rest of the world to farm.
Q 20Which city was the traditional burial place of Osiris and centre of his cult?
Abydos
Abydos. Egyptians longed to be buried near the god's supposed tomb there, and those who could not afford it had a memorial stone set up at the site instead.
Philae. Tribes from beyond Egypt's southern frontier had kept coming to worship there, and after the emperor's order the temple of Isis was turned into a church.
Q 24Egyptians saw Isis, the wife of Osiris, in which star, whose dawn rising came just before the Nile flood?
Sirius
Sirius. Egyptians called it Sothis, and a Greek account says they made it the star of Isis because it was 'the bringer of water', returning to the dawn sky as the river rose.
Q 25What did the dead recite before Osiris's 42 judges?
Sins they denied
Sins they denied. Each denial, such as 'I have not stolen', was addressed to one of the judges by name, so the dead had to arrive knowing all 42.
Q 26In the hall of Osiris, which demon devoured the hearts of those judged unworthy?
Ammit
Ammit. Part crocodile, part lion and part hippopotamus, she waited by the scales, and a soul she ate simply ceased to exist: Egypt imagined no eternal torment.
Q 27Which goddess's principles did the dead need to have lived by to enter Osiris's kingdom?
Maat
Maat. Her name was also the Egyptian word for truth and cosmic order, and pharaohs had themselves shown holding her emblems to prove they ruled by it.
Q 28At Mendes, Osiris's ba was worshipped in the form of which animal?
A ram
A ram. The Egyptian word ba meant both 'soul' and 'ram', so a living ram was kept at Mendes as the god's soul on earth and given a burial of its own when it died.
Q 29Osiris was merged with the falcon god Seker and which creator god of Memphis into a single funerary deity?
Ptah
Ptah. His temple at Memphis was called Hut-ka-Ptah, 'temple of the soul of Ptah', and the name is thought to lie behind the Greek Aigyptos, and so behind the word Egypt.
Q 30Which god, promoted by the Ptolemies, is usually said to combine Osiris with the sacred Apis bull?
Serapis
Serapis. Ptolemy I relaunched the old Memphis underworld god with a Greek face, and he became the patron of Alexandria and, in time, the consort of Isis.