Ancient Egypt Riddles: 31 Riddles from the Land of the Pharaohs

I have a square base and four triangle sides that meet in a point at the top. The biggest of me were built as tombs for kings. What am I?

I was wrapped from head to toe in strips of linen, dried with salt, and laid in a painted coffin so my body would last forever. What am I?

I’m one of the longest rivers on Earth, and I flow north through the desert. Without my yearly floods, Egypt would have been little more than sand. What am I?

I wore a double crown, ruled all of Egypt, and people believed I was the link between them and the gods. What am I?

I have the body of a lion and the head of a man, and I have been lying beside the pyramids of Giza for about 4,500 years. What am I?

Egyptians loved me so much that killing one of me was a serious crime, and the goddess Bastet was shown with my head. What am I?

I grow as a tall reed along the Nile. Slice me thin, press me flat, let me dry, and you can write on me. What am I?

I’m a kind of writing made from little pictures: owls, feet, snakes, eyes and water. What am I?

I’m a beetle that rolls balls of dung across the ground. Egyptians thought I looked like the god who rolled the sun across the sky, and they wore charms shaped like me. What am I?

I lurk in the Nile with a long snout full of teeth, and the god Sobek was shown with my head. What am I?

I have the head of a jackal, and I watch over the people who turn the dead into mummies. Who am I?

There are four of us, and our lids are often shaped like heads. We hold the lungs, liver, stomach and intestines of a mummy. What are we?

I’m a broken slab of dark stone with the same message carved on me in three different scripts. Thanks to me, people learned to read hieroglyphs again. What am I?

I’m an oval loop drawn around a group of hieroglyphs. If you see me, the name inside belongs to a king or queen. What am I?

Every day I sail my boat across the sky, and every night I travel through the underworld. Egyptians saw me in the sun itself. Who am I?

I became pharaoh when I was about nine years old and died about ten years later. I wasn’t very important in my own time, but my almost untouched tomb made me the most famous pharaoh today. Who am I?

Ancient Egyptians called their own country Kemet, “the black land”. Was it named after the night sky, people’s hair, or the soil?

When embalmers made a mummy, they left the heart inside the body, but they pulled out and threw away one organ they didn’t think was worth keeping. Which one?

I look like a cross with a loop on top, and gods hold me in paintings. I stand for life. What am I?

I was a woman who ruled Egypt as pharaoh for well over a decade, and some statues show me wearing the false beard that kings wore. Who am I?

I’m a long pole on a pivot with a bucket on one end and a heavy weight on the other. Farmers used me to lift water from the Nile onto their fields. What am I?

Which famous Egyptian queen lived closer in time to the first Moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramid?

After death, Egyptians believed their heart was weighed on a scale. If it balanced, they went on to the afterlife. What sat on the other side of the scale?

In ancient Egypt, “Upper Egypt” was in the south and “Lower Egypt” was in the north. Why is it upside down compared with most maps?

I’m a tall, thin, four-sided stone pillar with a tiny pyramid on top. Two of me, one in London and one in New York, are nicknamed after a queen who lived more than 1,000 years after we were carved. What am I?

A builder stacks stone blocks into a small pyramid: 1 block on top, 4 blocks in the layer below, 9 in the layer below that. How many blocks does a pyramid with 4 layers need?

Hundreds of us small figures were buried with the dead, so that when the gods called on the dead person to farm in the afterlife, we could do the work instead. What are we?

The Egyptian farmer’s year had just three seasons, not four: Growing, Harvest, and a third season that came first. What was it?

Why didn’t the mummy take a vacation?

Hieroglyphs could be written left to right, right to left, or top to bottom. How can you tell which way to start reading?

I’m a board game with 30 squares in three rows of ten. Egyptians played me for more than 2,000 years, and several boards were buried with Tutankhamun. What am I?