Tefnut
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40 free Tefnut trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Tefnut is one of the oldest goddesses in Egyptian mythology, and one of the strangest. She was born without a mother, married her own twin, and once walked out on Egypt in a fury that the other gods had to talk her out of. These questions collect the fun facts about Tefnut that people go looking for: how she came into being, what she looks like in temple art, who her children and grandchildren are, where she was worshipped, and what her name might mean. A few follow her into modern times, from astronomy to television. The quiz suits students of ancient Egypt, mythology fans and anyone who met her in a novel, a game or a series and wants the real story. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you leave knowing more than when you started.
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Q 01The Egyptian goddess Tefnut usually appears as a woman with the head of which fierce animal?
A lioness
A lioness marked Tefnut as dangerous as well as life-giving, and some images show her as the whole animal with no human body at all.
Q 02The name Tefnut may imitate the sound of which bodily act, the way her father made her in some myths?
Spitting
Spitting is the best guess: the 'tef' in her name sounds like an Egyptian word for the act, and some creation texts say her father simply ejected her from his mouth.
Q 03When the lost Tefnut and her twin returned, the Egyptian creator god wept, and his tears became what?
The first humans
The first humans sprang from those tears, a pun in Egyptian, where the words for 'tears' and 'people' sound almost alike.
Q 04Which Egyptian god of the air was both the twin brother and the husband of the goddess Tefnut?
Shu
Shu and Tefnut were the first divine couple, and every other god in their famous family descends from the pair.
Q 05In a well-known myth, the furious Tefnut abandons Egypt and storms off to which neighbouring land?
Nubia
Nubia, the land up the Nile from Egypt, is where she fled in a rage after quarrelling with the sun god, and it took another god's coaxing to bring her home.
Q 06Tefnut Mons, a mountain named after Tefnut, lies on which planet, where mountains honour goddesses?
Venus
Venus has a 182-kilometre-wide Tefnut Mons because nearly all its mountains are named after goddesses from the world's mythologies.
Q 07Which Marvel series on Disney+, starring Oscar Isaac, includes a human avatar of the goddess Tefnut?
Moon Knight
Moon Knight cast Hayley Konadu as Tefnut's avatar, one of several mortals who speak for Egyptian gods in the 2022 series.
Q 08In the Egyptian creation story, Tefnut personifies which element, the partner of her twin's dry air?
Moisture
Moisture made Tefnut the goddess of dew and rain, and with her twin she formed the first pair of cosmic elements in the world.
Q 09Which Egyptian queen's famous tall blue crown may derive from a headdress linking royal women to Tefnut?
Nefertiti
Nefertiti's crown, in the view of Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley, grew out of an older queen's plant-topped headdress that identified its wearer with Tefnut.
Q 10Which Egyptian god, in one tale disguised as a monkey, coaxed the raging Tefnut home with stories?
Thoth
Thoth, the gods' messenger and peacemaker, won her round with a string of arguments, fables and hymns, his usual job when a goddess lost her temper.
Q 11Which son of Tefnut challenged his own father and then took Tefnut as his chief queen in one myth?
Geb
Geb, the earth god, resented his father for prising him apart from the sky goddess, so he drove the old god out and claimed his mother.
Q 12Which daughter of Tefnut became the Egyptian sky goddess, usually painted arching over the earth?
Nut
Nut is often painted as a woman covered in stars, her body bent over the world while her brother the earth lies beneath her.
Q 13Which self-created Egyptian god, who rose from chaos on the first mound, fathered Tefnut with no mother?
Atum
Atum was imagined as alone in the dark abyss at the start of time, so he had to produce his first two children entirely from his own body.
Q 21Tefnut's wig is usually topped by a uraeus, the royal brow emblem shaped like which creature?
A cobra
A cobra, reared up and ready to strike, was Egypt's sign of royal and divine authority, worn on the crowns of kings as well as gods.
Q 22Which queen, grandmother of Tutankhamun, wore a plant-topped headdress tying her to a form of Tefnut?
Tiye
Tiye was shown in a low, flat crown sprouting plants, the same headdress Tefnut herself wore in the art of the period.
Q 23Which cow-horned goddess of love and music was fused with Tefnut in a double name found in Egyptian texts?
Hathor
Hathor-Tefnut is one of many blended names in Egyptian texts, joining two goddesses who were both called daughters of the sun god.
Q 14At which ancient city, now under a Cairo suburb, did the creator god bring Tefnut into being?
Heliopolis
Heliopolis was Egypt's great centre of sun worship, and one of the oldest Egyptian spells sets the birth of Tefnut and her twin there.
Q 15Tefnut, her father, twin, children and grandchildren together make up which famous group of Egyptian gods?
The Ennead
The Ennead takes its name from the Greek for 'the nine', the number of gods in the family worshipped together as a group.
Q 16Which grandson of Tefnut became the Egyptian ruler of the dead after his own brother murdered him?
Osiris
Osiris was one of the grandchildren born to Tefnut's daughter, and his death and revival became Egypt's central story of the afterlife.
Q 17Which granddaughter of Tefnut, famed for her magic, brought her murdered husband back to life?
Isis
Isis outgrew the rest of the family: her worship later spread from Egypt throughout the Greek and Roman world.
Q 18Which falcon-headed god, who avenged his murdered father, was the great-grandson of the goddess Tefnut?
Horus
Horus the Younger sits four generations below the creator, and each living pharaoh came to be seen as his earthly form.
Q 19Tefnut was one of several fierce goddesses who could act as which roving, fiery agent of the sun god?
The Eye of Ra
The Eye of Ra was imagined as a goddess in her own right, a daughter the sun god could send out to burn up his enemies.
Q 20Tefnut's motherless birth is told in which Old Kingdom writings, carved inside royal tombs at Saqqara?
Pyramid Texts
The Pyramid Texts are Egypt's oldest funerary writings, spells meant to lift a dead king to the sky, and two of them tell how Tefnut was made.
Q 24Which goddess, once sent to slaughter mankind, shared Tefnut's role as the sun god's raging daughter?
Sekhmet
Sekhmet was only stopped when beer dyed red was poured out for her: she drank it as blood and became too drunk to go on.
Q 25Priests at Thebes fused Tefnut with which goddess, the wife of Amun, in a local double-named form?
Mut
Mut, whose name simply means 'mother', also stars in one late version of the wandering goddess tale before becoming Tefnut again at the end.
Q 26At which vast temple complex in ancient Thebes was Tefnut invoked in prayers for the pharaoh's health?
Karnak
Karnak, the sprawling temple city near modern Luxor, called on Tefnut as one of a family of gods to keep the king well.
Q 27To ward off enemies, Tefnut could bear a title naming her the 'mistress of' which destructive force?
The flame
The flame fits her fiercer side as the sun god's fiery defender, and in this role she was shown adorned with fire as a shield against enemies.
Q 28In a ritual honouring Tefnut, the pharaoh clubbed a ball that stood for part of which chaos serpent?
Apep
Apep was the giant snake and great enemy of the sun god, who had to beat him every night, so striking the ball replayed that victory.
Q 29Tefnut was one of the few old gods apparently tolerated under which pharaoh's cult of the sun disk?
Akhenaten
Akhenaten swept aside most of Egypt's gods for the Aten, yet his new faith appears to have kept a place for Tefnut and her twin.
Q 30In a late Egyptian tale, the runaway Tefnut first roams a far-off land in the shape of which animal?
A cat
A cat was her calmer shape: when the messenger sent to fetch her said the wrong thing, she turned into something far fiercer and gave him a fright.