Egyptian Mythology Quiz — 10 Free Questions

Question 1

Which god personified the annual flooding of the Nile that made Egyptian farming possible, and was pictured as a heavy-bodied blue or green man with a swollen belly, pendulous breasts and a headdress of water plants?

Question 2

Which enormous serpent embodied chaos and non-existence, lying in wait in the underworld to attack and try to swallow the sun god's boat every single night, so that the sunrise was never guaranteed?

Question 3

What Egyptian term names the transfigured, shining, effective form of a spirit that a dead person became only after passing judgement and having their life-force and personality reunited by the proper rituals?

Question 4

What is the name for the image of a rearing cobra, hood spread, worn at the brow of Egyptian kings and many gods, poised to spit venom or fire at any enemy or wrongdoer?

Question 5

Which black jackal-headed god presided over embalming and the care of the dead, was believed to have performed the first mummification on the body of Osiris, and led the deceased into the hall of judgement?

Question 6

What was the name for the dark, boundless, lifeless expanse of water that existed before creation, out of which the first mound of land and the creator god emerged, and which was believed still to surround the ordered world on every side?

Question 7

Which creator god of Memphis, shown as a mummiform man with a straight beard and a skullcap, gripping a staff that combines the signs for power, stability and life, was said to have brought the world into being by conceiving it in his heart and speaking it into existence?

Question 8

Which god personified magic itself, the force that the Egyptians believed the creator used to make the world and that both gods and trained humans could wield through words, images and rites?

Question 9

What is the name for the boat in which the sun god was believed to sail, crossing the sky from east to west during the day and continuing through the underworld from west to east at night?

Question 10

Which white vulture goddess was the guardian of Upper Egypt and its rulers, shown hovering over the king with her wings spread and a ring symbolising eternity gripped in her claws?

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About Egyptian Mythology

Ancient Egyptian religion ran for more than three thousand years, and its gods, symbols and ideas about death fill the museums of the world. This quiz covers it in eighty questions. Each describes a deity, a creature, a place, an object, a text or a concept, and asks you to name it from four choices, then explains the role it played, the myth behind it and how we know about it. The picture is drawn from across the whole span, from the Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom to the Greek and Roman period, and where the sources differ, which they often do between one city and the next, the main variants are noted.

The first pack is the major gods and the shape of the cosmos: the sun god Ra and his nightly battle; Osiris, Isis, Horus and Set and the murder that binds them; Anubis, Thoth, Hathor, Amun, Ptah, Sekhmet and Bastet; the earth-and-sky pair Geb and Nut and the air god Shu who holds them apart; the self-made Atum; Ma'at, who is both a goddess and the principle of cosmic order; the chaos serpent Apophis; and the family of nine gods called the Ennead.

The second pack fills in the rest. More gods: Sobek, Khnum, Khonsu, Mut, Neith, Montu, Nefertem, Heka, Hapi, Bes, Taweret, Wadjet, Nekhbet and Wepwawet; the primeval waters called Nun; the heron-like Bennu bird behind the Greek phoenix; the demon Ammit who waits at the scales. The Osiris myth in detail, the coffin trick and the eighty-year lawsuit between Horus and Set. And the machinery of the afterlife: the Duat, the weighing of the heart, mummification and canopic jars, the ka, ba and akh, shabti figures, the Book of the Dead and its older cousins the Pyramid and Coffin Texts, and the great symbols, the ankh, the Eye of Horus, the scarab, the djed pillar, the was sceptre and the uraeus.

The third pack steps back to creation, cult and legacy: the eight gods of Hermopolis, the primeval mound and the benben, Ptah's creation by thought and word, the dawn god Khepri, the solar boat; the great sacred cities Heliopolis, Abydos and Thebes; the living Apis bull and the composite god Serapis; the pharaoh as Horus and son of Ra; hieroglyphs and the Rosetta Stone that unlocked them; the paradise called the Field of Reeds; the Great Sphinx; the Opening of the Mouth ritual; the Nile flood and the star goddess Sopdet who announced it; and the pharaoh Akhenaten and his one god, the Aten. Because a captioned tomb painting almost always gives the answer away, images are used only where a site photo or an ambiguous object does not, and everything has been checked against standard reference works.