Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free Nefertiti trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Nefertiti trivia quiz covers the 18th Dynasty queen whose painted limestone bust is one of the most copied faces in the world. The easy questions cover her husband, the sun disc they worshipped, the meaning of her name, the city where the bust sits today and the daughter who married Tutankhamun. From there the quiz moves through the Amarna years: the move from Thebes to Akhetaten, the boundary stelae, the talatat scenes in which she outnumbers her husband, the six daughters, the Year 12 tribute, the Year 16 quarry inscription and the argument over whether she reigned as the pharaoh Neferneferuaten. The hard end covers the archaeology and the afterlife of the bust: Thutmose's workshop, Ludwig Borchardt's diary and the photograph shown in poor light, James Simon, the 1924 unveiling, the missing quartz iris, the salt mine at Merkers, Hitler's promised museum, the Younger Lady in KV35, Joann Fletcher's mummy claim, Nicholas Reeves' hidden chambers, the CT scan that found a wrinkled second face and the copyright slapped on a 3D scan. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries for Nefertiti and the Nefertiti Bust before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our ancient Egypt, Tutankhamun and Cleopatra quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Nefertiti was the great royal wife of which pharaoh?
Akhenaten
He began his reign under another name and changed it in his fifth year.
Q 02What does the name Nefertiti mean?
The beautiful one has come
Some scholars once read the name as a hint she was a foreign princess, but there is no hard evidence.
Q 03To which dynasty of ancient Egypt did Nefertiti belong?
The 18th
She lived from about 1370 to about 1330 BC.
Q 04Which sun-disc deity was at the centre of the religion Nefertiti and her husband promoted?
The Aten
Atenism was exclusivist and possibly monotheistic, tied directly to the royal household.
Q 05To which new capital city, now called Amarna, did the royal couple move in the fourth year of the reign?
Akhetaten
Boundary stelae from years 4 and 5 mark its limits.
Q 06How many daughters are Nefertiti and her husband known to have had?
At least six
Their names all honoured the sun disc, and one of them later married Tutankhamun.
Q 07Which of Nefertiti's daughters married Tutankhamun and became known as Ankhesenamun?
Ankhesenpaaten
Meritaten, the eldest, married the shadowy king Smenkhkare.
Q 08What did genetic studies conclude about whether Nefertiti bore Tutankhamun?
His parent was an unnamed daughter of Amenhotep III and Tiye
She was once a candidate, but the mummy tests pointed elsewhere.
Q 09Which courtier, later pharaoh, is thought by many Egyptologists to have been Nefertiti's father because he bore the title 'God's Father'?
Ay
His wife Tey was 'Nurse of the Great Royal Wife', which suggests she was a stepmother rather than mother.
Q 10With which foreign princess, a Mitanni bride of the previous pharaoh, has Nefertiti sometimes been identified?
Tadukhipa
The theory rests partly on her name, but there is no hard evidence of a non-Egyptian background.
Q 11How does the number of depictions of Nefertiti compare with her husband's on the talatat blocks from the first five years of his reign?
Almost twice as many times
That visibility is read as proof of her exceptional political importance.
Q 12What kingly act is Nefertiti shown performing in some scenes, an act normally reserved for pharaohs?
Smiting Egypt's enemies
Captive enemies also decorate her throne.
Q 13By what throne name may Nefertiti have ruled briefly as a female pharaoh after her husband's death?
Neferneferuaten
Q 21What is famously missing from the bust?
The inlay of the left eye
The right iris is inserted quartz painted black and fixed with beeswax; the left socket is bare limestone.
Q 22How is the bust identified as Nefertiti, given it carries no inscription?
By her characteristic tall crown
She wears the same blue cap crown in labelled depictions such as the house altar.
Q 23How did Borchardt reportedly get the sculpture past the Egyptian antiquities inspector Gustave Lefebvre in 1913?
One of that pharaoh's cartouches carries the epithet 'Effective for her husband'.
Q 14A 2012 discovery of a quarry inscription dated to which regnal number proved Nefertiti was still alive far later than once thought?
16
It came from a limestone quarry at Deir Abu Hinnis and is also the last dated inscription naming the king.
Q 15By what name is Nefertiti called in the Hittite annals, according to one theory?
Dakhamunzu
It is a rendering of the Egyptian title Ta hemet nesu, The King's Wife.
Q 16In which institution is the famous bust of Nefertiti displayed?
The Neues in Berlin
It returned there as the centrepiece when the museum reopened in October 2009.
Q 17Which sculptor's workshop at Amarna yielded the bust?
Thutmose
It may have been a sculptor's model used to teach pupils, which could explain the unfinished left eye.
Q 18Which German archaeologist led the team that found the bust on 6 December 1912?
Ludwig Borchardt
His diary records: 'Suddenly we had in our hands the most alive Egyptian artwork. You must see it.'
Q 19What is the bust made of?
Limestone coated in painted stucco
Borchardt wrongly told the Egyptian inspector it was gypsum.
Q 20How tall is the bust and how much does it weigh?
48 cm and about 20 kg
Roughly life size, with an exaggeratedly long neck under the heavy crown.
A poor photograph, and the piece kept wrapped in a dim room
Egypt says he also misdescribed the material; the German side says the finds were divided fairly.
Q 24To which sponsor of the Amarna excavation was the bust presented when it reached Berlin in 1913?
James Simon
It sat in his residence before he lent it, with other Amarna finds, to the Berlin Museum.
Q 25In what year was the bust first displayed to the public, triggering Egypt's demands for its return?
1924
Egypt threatened to ban German excavations the following year unless it came home.
Q 26Which Nazi leader considered returning the bust to King Fuad I of Egypt as a political gesture in 1933?
Hermann Goering
Hitler vetoed the idea and promised instead to build a museum where Nefertiti would be enthroned.
Q 27Where was the bust hidden in March 1945 and then found by the American army?
A salt mine at Merkers-Kieselbach
It went to the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives branch, then spent ten years at Museum Wiesbaden.
Q 28What did a 2006 CT scan reveal beneath the stucco of the bust?
A wrinkled inner face carved in the limestone core
The sculptor smoothed creases and a bumped nose with his outer stucco layers; Science News called it proof the bust is genuine.
Q 29Roughly how many visitors see the bust each year?
500,000
It is the star exhibit used to market Berlin's museums and appeared on 1989 German stamps.
Q 30What controversial step did the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation take when it released a 3D scan of the bust?
It attached a copyright to a public-domain work
The scan was prised loose by a 2016 freedom of information request.