96 Fun Facts About Egyptian Mythology

Ra, one of the most important gods by the Fifth Dynasty, was primarily the god of what?

Ra was the sun god, thought to sail across the sky each day in a solar barque and through the underworld each night.

Which god of funerary rites and embalming is usually shown as a man with a canine head?

Anubis was lord of the dead in Egypt's earliest dynasties until Osiris displaced him; he stayed on as the embalmer and the guide who led souls to judgement.

Which bird's head does Horus, god of kingship and the sky, most often wear?

A falcon: Horus appears as the bird or as a falcon-headed man, and every living pharaoh was held to be Horus on earth, becoming Osiris only at death.

Which god of writing, wisdom and the Moon is depicted with the head of an ibis or a baboon?

Thoth was matched by the Greeks with Hermes, and his title 'thrice great' became Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary author of the Hermetic texts.

Which body part did Horus lose in his fight with Set, later restored as a famous protective amulet?

His eye was torn out by Set and then healed, becoming the wedjat, the 'whole' eye; Egyptians wore it as one of their commonest amulets from the Old Kingdom to Roman times.

Set was the Egyptian god of deserts, storms and what else?

Disorder and violence were Set's domain, and he murdered his brother Osiris; yet he was no simple villain, standing on Ra's boat each night to fight off the serpent of chaos.

In Plutarch's telling of the Osiris myth, which part of the dismembered god did Isis fail to recover?

His genitalia: Plutarch says Set threw the organ into the Nile, where fish ate it, so Isis fashioned a replica; in Egyptian accounts she recovers the whole body.

In Plutarch's telling, the chest holding Osiris's body drifts out to sea and washes up at which city?

Byblos: a tree grew around the chest there, and the local king had the trunk cut into a pillar for his palace with Osiris still inside, until Isis came and asked for it.

Horus and Set spent eighty years before a court of gods contending for what?

The throne of Egypt: Horus won contest after contest, yet the case dragged on because the presiding god kept siding with Set, until the court at last declared Horus king.

What is the Ennead?

Nine deities worshipped at Heliopolis formed the Great Ennead, a family running from the creator down to Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys; other towns had enneads of their own, and not all of them held exactly nine gods.

Which primordial god created himself and then fathered Shu and Tefnut, the first divine couple?

Atum emerged from the primeval waters to engender himself and then the gods; as the setting sun he was pictured as an old man who had to be renewed every night.

Which goddess is shown as a star-covered woman arching over the earth, swallowing the sun each evening?

Nut swallowed the sun at dusk and gave birth to it at dawn; in Plutarch's telling she was forbidden to bear children on any day of the year, so five extra days were won from the moon for her.

Which Egyptian earth god is usually shown lying beneath the arched body of the sky goddess?

Geb was counted among the first divine rulers of Egypt, and the pharaohs claimed descent from him; he is sometimes shown with a goose on his head, the sign that writes his name.

Which god of air holds the sky goddess aloft, keeping her apart from the earth god below?

Shu stands between his two children with arms raised; the Egyptians said he had to part the pair, who were locked in an embrace, before there was room for the world between them.

Tefnut's name may imitate the sound of which act that brought her into being?

Spitting: in the Coffin Texts the creator sneezes out her twin Shu and spits out Tefnut, and late texts even wrote her name with the sign of a spitting mouth.

The Ogdoad were eight primordial deities worshipped at which city?

Hermopolis was called Khemenu, 'Eight-Town', after the Ogdoad; its Greek name honors Hermes, and the old one survives in the modern village of el-Ashmunein.

Ptah, the chief god of Memphis, brought the world into being by what means?

The creative power of speech: the Shabaka Stone says Ptah conceived the world in his heart and spoke it with his tongue; the slab was apparently later reused as a millstone, wearing away part of the text.

Which god fashioned human bodies from clay on a potter's wheel and placed them in their mothers' wombs?

Khnum was also lord of the Nile's first cataract at Elephantine: an inscription nearby tells of a seven-year famine, and of a king who sought the flood's return by honoring the god's temple.

Which giant serpent, the enemy of Ra, embodied chaos and darkness?

Apep, called Apophis by the Greeks, attacked the sun god's boat every night; priests fought back with a yearly rite in which they spat on, trampled and burned an effigy of him.

Ra travelled by night through the underworld in which form?

As a ram-headed god: the Egyptian word for ram sounded like ba, 'soul', a likely pun that showed the night sun as a soul travelling to rejoin its body.

What was the Egyptian name for the underworld realm the dead passed through?

The Duat was dangerous enough that coffins were painted with guides to it: the Book of Two Ways, about 4,000 years old, is the earliest known Egyptian map of the underworld.

What did the ancient Egyptians actually call the text we know as the Book of the Dead?

Spells of Coming Forth by Day was the Egyptian title; 'Book of the Dead' dates only from 1842, when the German scholar Karl Richard Lepsius published a papyrus as the 'Todtenbuch'.

In the Weighing of the Heart, a dead person's heart was set on the scales against what?

A feather, the emblem of Maat, goddess of truth: a heart heavy with wrongdoing was fed to the monster Ammit, while a light one won its owner a place in the afterlife.

Ammit, who devoured hearts that failed the judgement, combined the parts of which three animals?

Lion, hippopotamus and crocodile: Ammit had the crocodile's head, the lion's forequarters and the hippopotamus's hindquarters, the three largest man-eaters the Egyptians knew, and was feared but never worshipped.

Maat's ideological opposite, meaning injustice, chaos and violence, was called what?

Isfet had to be fought: order was held to have replaced it at creation, and each new king took on the sun god's role of setting Maat in its place again.

Which organ did the baboon-headed Hapy, one of the four sons of Horus, guard?

Baboon-headed Hapy guarded the lungs; Imsety (human) had the liver, Duamutef (jackal) the stomach and Qebehsenuef (falcon) the intestines.

In the myth of humanity's near-destruction, Ra halted the rampaging Sekhmet by dyeing what red to look like blood?

Beer, dyed with red ochre and poured out like a lake, fooled the goddess: she drank it as blood, fell into a stupor and forgot the slaughter, and Egyptians marked the escape with a yearly festival of drunkenness.

Which goddess, best known in the form of a cat, was first worshipped as a fierce lioness?

Bastet began as a lioness goddess of Bubastis and softened into a cat in later centuries; when her temple there was excavated, more than 300,000 mummified cats were found.

Which goddess of writing and measurement was shown with a seven-pointed emblem above her head?

Seshat helped the king 'stretch the cord' to lay out a new temple, and is shown notching a palm rib to count the years of his reign.

Hathor, goddess of music, love and motherhood, was usually shown as or with the horns of which animal?

A cow: Hathor appears as a cow or as a woman crowned with cow horns and a sun disk, a headdress Isis later took over; in late times Egyptian women hoped to become Hathor in the next world, as men hoped to become Osiris.

Sobek, associated with pharaonic power and the dangers of the Nile, has the head of which animal?

A crocodile: at his chief sanctuary in the Faiyum, priests kept a live sacred crocodile named Petsuchos, in which the god himself was believed to dwell.

Taweret, protector of childbirth, is depicted as an upright female version of which animal?

A hippopotamus, upright and pregnant, with a lion's claws and a crocodile's tail: female hippos guard their young fiercely, which made her a fitting protector, and her image was worn as an amulet.

Bes, the bearded dwarf god shown face-on, was chiefly a protector of whom?

Bes guarded mothers and children, above all at childbirth; his ugliness was the point, a fierce face on beds and mirrors meant to frighten evil spirits away.

Khepri, the god of the morning sun, has the face of which creature?

Khepri has a scarab beetle for a face: the Egyptians likened the beetle rolling its dung ball to the sun being pushed across the sky.

The Egyptian Bennu bird may have inspired which creature of Greek legend?

The phoenix that Herodotus heard of at Heliopolis flew in from Arabia carrying its dead father in a ball of myrrh; scholars link the tale to the Bennu, the self-created heron of Egyptian myth.

Serket was the goddess of protection against the sting of which creature, shown on her head?

The scorpion: Serket's full name is usually read as 'she who causes the throat to breathe', and physicians served as her priests; she was also one of four goddesses guarding the embalmed organs.

Wadjet, the cobra goddess, stood for which region of the united Two Lands?

Lower Egypt is, despite its name, the north: the Nile Delta; Wadjet, its cobra, rears on the royal brow as the uraeus, sometimes beside Nekhbet, the vulture of Upper Egypt.

Which goddess of Sais, whose emblem was a shield with crossed arrows, did the Greeks identify with Athena?

Neith's link with Athena drew Greek writers to her city: in Plato's Timaeus the people of Sais call her their founder, and it is there that Solon hears the story of Atlantis.

Which god of the lotus blossom and its fragrance was the son of Ptah and Sekhmet?

Nefertem was the blue lotus that rose from the primeval waters at creation; a famous wooden head shows the young Tutankhamun as the god, emerging from the flower.

Which pharaoh made the sun disc the sole focus of state worship?

Akhenaten moved the capital to Amarna and made the Aten supreme; after his death Tutankhamun reopened the old temples and restored Amun.

How is the Aten depicted in Amarna-period art?

A disc with rays ending in hands: the little hands reach down to the royal family alone, offering them the sign of life; the Aten had no human or animal body at all.

Nephthys, sister-wife of Set, was paired with Isis in funerary rites in what role?

Protectresses of the mummy, the sisters are often shown as kites watching over the bier; the birds' piercing cries reminded Egyptians of wailing women, and mourning Osiris is almost Nephthys's only role in myth.

Which Egyptian god's name was simply the word for 'magic'?

Heka was both the god and the force itself; because magic was part of medicine, Egyptian physicians called on him as they worked.

Greek writers such as Plutarch identified Set with which monster of their own mythology?

Typhon, like Set, was a storm-bringer who attacked the chief god; Greek myth even had the Olympians flee from him to Egypt disguised as animals.

Imhotep, later deified as a god of medicine, is credited with designing the Step Pyramid of which king?

Djoser's minister was worshipped as a god of medicine only some 2,000 years after his death, and the Greeks then matched him with their own healer Asclepius.

Min, whose cult centred on Coptos and Akhmim, is shown holding what in his upheld right hand?

Min is shown ithyphallic with his right arm raised holding a flail; Flinders Petrie dug up colossal early statues of him at Coptos (Qift) in the 1890s.

Which pungent gas is named after an Egyptian god whose Libyan temple stood near deposits of its salts?

Ammonia comes from sal ammoniac, the 'salt of Ammon', the Greek and Roman name for the god Amun. The gas itself was only christened in 1782, by a Swedish chemist.

Which leafy vegetable, eaten by men as an aphrodisiac, was sacred to the Egyptian fertility god Min?

Lettuce was offered to Min and then eaten by men hoping for potency. The tall Egyptian variety oozed a milky sap when rubbed, which is how it earned the reputation.

Which body part did Horus lose fighting Set, later healed and worn by Egyptians as a protective amulet?

An eye, torn out by Set and later made whole, became one of Egypt's commonest amulets for over two thousand years. Its injury and healing were likened to the moon's waning and waxing.

In later Egyptian art the goddess Bastet has the head of which animal, mummified by the thousand in her honour?

A cat was such a popular offering to Bastet that more than 200,000 mummified animals, most of them cats, were found in one cemetery at Beni Hasan in the late 1880s.

According to the Dream Stele, which monument promised a prince the throne if he cleared away the sand burying it?

The Great Sphinx, then buried to its shoulders, was revered as a form of Horus. Thutmose IV dug out its front paws and set up the granite stele between them.

Egyptian texts describe the gods as having bones of silver, hair of lapis lazuli and flesh made of what?

Gold was only the start: the same writings say the gods gave off a scent like the incense burned in temple rituals.

At which temple of Ramesses II does sunlight reach the inner statues twice a year, leaving only Ptah in darkness?

Abu Simbel was aligned so that dawn light strikes its sanctuary on two days a year, sparing Ptah, a god tied to the realm of the dead. In 1968 the whole complex was moved to higher ground.

Which looped cross, carried by gods in Egyptian art, was the sign used to write the Egyptian word for 'life'?

The ankh sign also spelled the Egyptian words for 'mirror' and 'bouquet', which shared its consonants. Egypt's Christians, the Copts, later adapted it as a form of the cross.

What kind of vehicle carried the Egyptian god Ra across the sky by day and through the underworld by night?

A boat, in fact two of them: the Mandjet, or morning-boat, carried him through the day, and the Mesektet, or evening-boat, took over at dusk.

Which conqueror crossed the desert to the oracle of Amun at Siwa, where he was declared the god's own son?

Alexander the Great later appeared on coins wearing the horns of Amun as a badge of his divinity. From then on he often spoke of the god as his true father.

Which Egyptian moon god, whose name means 'traveller', resurrects the hero of Marvel's Moon Knight as his avatar?

Khonsu, spelled Khonshu by Marvel, was worshipped at Thebes as the son of Amun and Mut. His name is thought to echo the Moon's nightly trip across the sky.

Which Roman emperor founded an Egyptian city for his drowned companion Antinous, worshipped there as Osiris-Antinous?

Hadrian was sailing on the Nile with Antinous when the young man drowned in AD 130. The emperor had him declared a god, and the cult long outlived its founder.

Which vessels, wrongly named by early Egyptologists after a Greek sea captain, held the organs removed from a mummy?

Canopic jars owe their name to Canopus, a legendary helmsman said to have been worshipped in the form of a jar. None was made for the heart, which stayed in the body.

In Egyptian art Osiris, wrapped like a mummy from the chest down, is usually given skin of which colour?

Green was the colour of rebirth, fitting for a god who came back from death. Painters sometimes made him black instead, after the fertile soil of the Nile floodplain.

Which star did the Egyptians worship as the goddess Sopdet, bringer of their New Year?

Sirius reappeared at dawn just before the Nile's yearly flood, the event the whole farming year hung on. The Greeks knew the star's goddess as Sothis.

Which constellation did the Egyptians worship as the god Sah, husband of the star goddess Sopdet?

Orion was where a dead pharaoh was thought to travel, and Sah was later merged with Osiris himself.

The goddess Nekhbet hovers over the pharaoh in Egyptian art, wings spread and clutching a shen ring, as which bird?

A vulture, and one of the 'Two Ladies' who guarded the king alongside the cobra Wadjet. In the New Kingdom the pair appeared together on the headdresses kings were buried in.

Egyptian women are thought to have worn amulets of the goddess Heqet in childbirth, shaped like which animal?

A frog was an ancient Egyptian symbol of fertility, tied to the yearly flooding of the Nile. Heqet came to watch over the final stages of labour.

The Apis, chosen by its markings and worshipped at Memphis as an aspect of Ptah, was which animal?

A bull, picked out as a calf from the herds and installed in a temple. The tombs of more than sixty such animals were found in underground galleries at Saqqara.

What was the Egyptian paradise called, a land of islands where the blessed dead lived on for eternity under Osiris?

The Field of Reeds was pictured as an ideal version of the Nile Delta, with boundless reed beds for hunting and farming. Souls reached it only after passing a series of guarded gates.

What name is given to the rearing cobra worn on a pharaoh's headdress as a sign of divine authority?

The uraeus stood for the goddess Wadjet, so wearing it showed that she protected the king and backed his claim to the land.

Which Egyptian funeral rite, in which a priest touched a mummy with an adze, was meant to revive its senses?

Opening of the Mouth let the dead breathe, speak, see, eat and drink again. They needed a voice above all, to recite spells and plead their innocence before the gods.

What name is given to the small figurines buried in Egyptian tombs to do farm work for the dead in the afterlife?

Ushabtis carried inscriptions promising to answer when the gods summoned the dead to work, and many shoulder a hoe and a basket. One surviving receipt is for 401 of them.

Which hybrid god did Ptolemy I promote to unite his Greek and Egyptian subjects?

Serapis was shown in a blend of Greek and Egyptian styles, starting with the cult statue Ptolemy set up in Alexandria.

Which instrument, its frame said to echo Hathor's face and horns, did Egyptian priestesses play in the goddess's rites?

The sistrum was a rattle, and its Egyptian name, sesheshet, imitated the sound it made. It was also shaken to frighten away Set.

Which spells, carved inside royal tombs at Saqqara, are the earliest known body of Egyptian religious writing?

The Pyramid Texts go back to about 2400 BC. When they came to light in the 1880s, Egypt's veteran excavations chief refused to believe it: he had never seen writing inside a pyramid.

In Egyptian creation myths, what name was given to the dark primordial waters from which the first mound of land rose?

Nun did not vanish once the world was made: Egyptians pictured its ocean still surrounding the bubble in which all life exists.

In one Egyptian spell, a goddess has a snake bite the god Ra so that he will reveal what to her?

His true name carried incomparable power, and she offered to cure him only if he gave it up. Ra was older and greater than she was, so a trick was her way to win it.

In the myth of their contest for the throne, Horus and Set agreed to race in ships made of what?

Stone was the rule, but Horus cheated: he built his ship of wood and painted it to match. Set's sank, while his nephew's stayed afloat.

Some Egyptian creation texts say the first humans sprang from what, shed by the creator god in a moment of distress?

His tears, shed in weakness, were said to foreshadow the flawed nature and sorrowful lives of the people who sprang from them.

Which vast temple complex at Thebes, known to Egyptians as 'The Most Select of Places', was the chief home of Amun?

Karnak's Great Hypostyle Hall alone holds 134 massive columns arranged in 16 rows, in a precinct that is just one of the complex's four main parts.

Which Rick Riordan series follows siblings Carter and Sadie, young magicians who become hosts to Egyptian gods?

The Kane Chronicles makes its heroes descendants of two pharaohs, Narmer and Ramses the Great. Riordan based the pair on two siblings he had taught.

In which 1994 film do soldiers travel to a desert world ruled by an alien posing as Ra?

Stargate's Ra is an alien who came to Earth in ancient Egyptian times and possessed human bodies to prolong his life. A spin-off series, Stargate SG-1, later ran for ten seasons.

Which tall, tapering monuments, each cut from a single block, did Egyptians raise in pairs at temple entrances?

Obelisks stood for the god Ra, and conquerors prized them: Rome now holds thirteen ancient ones, more than any other city in the world.

Which Egyptian script, whose Greek name means 'sacred engraved letters', did its own users call 'words of gods'?

Hieroglyphs were last carved, as far as anyone knows, at the temple of Philae in AD 394, three years after a Roman emperor ordered every non-Christian temple closed.

Greek writers identified Neith, an Egyptian patron of weaving and war, with which goddess of their own?

Athena shared Neith's unusual pairing of the loom and the battlefield. As a creator, Neith was even said to reweave the world on her loom every day.

Copies of the Book of the Dead were usually written on scrolls of which material and placed in the coffin?

Papyrus scrolls were often illustrated with scenes of the owner's journey into the afterlife. Many were prefabricated in workshops, with gaps left for the name to be filled in later.

Meretseger, a serpent goddess tied to a pyramid-shaped peak near Thebes, watched over which royal burial ground?

The Valley of the Kings lies below el Qurn, 'The Horn', a peak whose outline may be why pharaohs chose the site. When the valley fell out of use, her worship ended too.

Greeks and Romans misread the child Horus's finger-to-mouth pose and made him, as Harpocrates, their god of what?

Silence was a misreading: in Egyptian art a finger at the mouth was simply the standard way of showing a child, taken from the written sign for 'child'.

Which Egyptian board game, buried with Tutankhamun, is played against an invisible opponent in the Book of the Dead?

Senet was already ancient by Tutankhamun's day: the oldest intact boards date to the Middle Kingdom, and graffiti hint that it was played in the Old Kingdom.

Which obscure Egyptian god, drawn like a cartoon ghost in one funerary scroll, became a Japanese internet meme?

Medjed is described in the Book of the Dead as one who shoots with his eyes yet is unseen. He has since turned up in Japanese video games and anime.

Which sacred object, standing for the first mound of creation, gave its name to the capstone of an Egyptian pyramid?

The benben marked the spot where the first rays of dawn were said to fall, and the pointed block crowning a pyramid was called a benbenet after it.

Which Delta city held the festival that Herodotus called Egypt's largest, drawing several hundred thousand pilgrims?

Bubastis was the home of the goddess Bastet, and its ruins now lie on the edge of the modern city of Zagazig.

From which temple of Hathor was a famous carved zodiac ceiling removed and taken to Paris in 1821?

Dendera's zodiac was installed in the royal library by Louis XVIII and reached the Louvre only in 1922. It had roofed the porch of a chapel of Osiris inside the temple.

The five extra days that closed the Egyptian year, outside its regular 30-day months, were known as what?

Birthdays of the gods began with that of Osiris on the first day. The period was still thought spiritually dangerous, and the pharaoh performed a rite called 'Pacifying Sekhmet' to get through it.

Which part of the Egyptian soul was pictured as a human-headed bird, free to fly out of the tomb?

The ba could leave the tomb and return to the mummy, and after death it was reunited with the ka, the person's vital essence.

Which city became the chief cult centre of Osiris, where an early royal tomb was reinterpreted as the god's own grave?

Abydos was first sacred to a local god, Khentiamentiu, whose name ended up as one of Osiris's titles. Pilgrims later took the tomb of King Djer for the god's burial place.

The crouching god Heh, a palm stem gripped in each hand, doubled as the Egyptian written sign for which number?

A million was as good as infinity to the Egyptians, so Heh was also called the god of millions of years. Notches on the palm stems he holds stood for years.

In Egyptian art the god Amun is usually recognised by a crown bearing which distinctive ornament?

Twin plumes mark Amun out. After the Amarna period painters also gave him blue skin, a sign of his links with air and the first creation.

Unlike almost every other Egyptian god, the dwarf god Bes is drawn in which unusual way in paintings and reliefs?

Facing straight out at the viewer, where other gods stand in profile, Bes looked ready to attack any approaching evil.