Q 01/05

'Mummy' comes from a word for which black substance, once thought to coat the bodies?

A) Charcoal

B) Asphalt

C) Soot

D) Ink

Answer · why

B) Asphalt

Asphalt. Medieval writers believed Egypt's blackened bodies had been embalmed with it, so the name of the tar passed to the corpses themselves.

Q 02/05

Egypt's sacred Apis, kept in a temple at Memphis and mummified when it died, was which animal?

A) A ram

B) A crocodile

C) A bull

D) A lion

Answer · why

C) A bull

A bull. Priests picked each Apis by its markings; when one died it was embalmed, and the later bulls were laid in giant stone sarcophagi in the tunnel...

Q 03/05

In 1890, a shipload of Egyptian mummies was sold in England as fertilizer; most were mummies of which animal?

A) Ibises

B) Dogs

C) Baboons

D) Cats

Answer · why

D) Cats

Cats. Egyptians had offered them to the gods by the thousand, and Victorian merchants saw the bodies as cheap fertilizer for English fields.

Q 04/05

The Chinchorro mummies, far older than Egypt's, are a World Heritage Site on the Pacific coast of which country?

A) Ecuador

B) Colombia

C) Mexico

D) Chile

Answer · why

D) Chile

Chile. The Chinchorro, a fishing people of the Atacama coast, mummified children and babies as well as adults, rebuilding each body with sticks, reeds...

Q 05/05

What let a Nevada tribe reclaim Spirit Cave Man, North America's oldest mummy?

A) A genome study

B) A carbon-dating test

C) A Senate vote

D) A presidential order

Answer · why

A) A genome study

A genome study. Officials had disputed his ancestry, but DNA showed the man, who lived more than 10,000 years ago, was related to today's Native Ameri...