Egyptian Mythology Quiz — 7 Free Questions

Question 1

What is the name for the stylised human eye with a curling line and teardrop below it, representing the eye that the falcon god lost in his fight with his uncle and that was then healed and made whole, so that it stood for protection, healing and restoration?

Question 2

Which account of the origin of the world, associated with the craftsman god Ptah, holds that he created everything, the other gods included, first by conceiving it in his heart and then by naming it with his tongue, so that thought and speech alone brought it into being?

Question 3

Which ram-headed god was believed to fashion each person, and their spirit-double, out of Nile clay on a potter's wheel, and to control the yearly flood from caverns at the first cataract?

Question 4

What is the name for the looped amulet resembling an ankh with its arms turned down, often made of red stone or glass, that is understood as the knot or girdle of Isis and was placed on the mummy to bring her protection?

Question 5

What is the name for the visible disc of the sun, which the pharaoh Akhenaten raised from a minor aspect of the sun god to the sole god of Egypt, worshipped in open-air temples with no cult statue?

Question 6

Which sacred bird, usually shown as a grey heron with a long straight double crest, was linked with the sun god, with Osiris, with the rising of the Nile flood and with the idea of self-renewal, perching on the primeval mound at the first dawn?

Question 7

Which god personified the air and the light-filled space between earth and sky, and is shown kneeling with his arms raised, holding the body of the sky goddess up and away from the earth god lying below?

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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.