Ancient history trivia questions: Egypt and Rome, 10 with answers

Ancient history is full of questions with answers that are bigger than the question. Here are ten ancient history trivia questions about Egypt and Rome, from a boy king to the fall of an empire. Use them at a dinner table, or as a round in a trivia quiz online with friends.

The questions

1. Which boy pharaoh's treasure-filled tomb was found in 1922?
2. What did ancient Egyptians do to preserve dead bodies?
3. Which famous queen of Egypt had relationships with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony?
4. Which Roman leader was stabbed to death on the Ides of March, 44 BC?
5. Which Roman city was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE?
6. Which empire built Hadrian's Wall in northern England?
7. Who led a famous slave revolt against Rome?
8. Who discovered Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922?
9. Who was the first Roman emperor?
10. In which year did the Western Roman Empire traditionally fall?

The answers, with a note on each

1. Tutankhamun. His gold mask weighs about 10 kilograms.
2. They mummified them. The process could take around 70 days.
3. Cleopatra. She lived closer in time to the Moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramid.
4. Julius Caesar. He was stabbed 23 times by a group of senators.
5. Pompeii. It was so well preserved that bread was found still in the ovens.
6. The Roman Empire. The wall is about 117 kilometres long.
7. Spartacus. His army may have grown to around 70,000 people.
8. Howard Carter. Rumours of a curse began when his backer, Lord Carnarvon, died months later.
9. Augustus. Julius Caesar was a dictator and never an emperor.
10. 476 CE. The last emperor of the West, Romulus Augustulus, was a teenager.

How hard is the set?

Questions 1 to 3 are for everyone. Questions 4 to 7 are medium and good for teams. Questions 8 to 10 are hard enough to split a table. A date question like the last is easiest to mark by giving a point to anyone within a century, and a bonus for the exact year.

How do you use it on the night?

Slot this into a longer trivia night as one round among several. A general knowledge round before it and a music round after it make a balanced evening of about an hour.

Why does Cleopatra's note always surprise people?

Because it rearranges time. The pyramids of Giza were already ancient when Cleopatra lived, and the Moon landing is nearer to her than the pyramids were. A quizmaster who puts this in front of a table gets a gasp every time. It is a good reminder that antiquity is not one era but a very long stretch of them.

What follow-up questions work?

Ask who built the Colosseum, which city was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire and what the Rosetta Stone says. They are in the same bank, and a table that enjoyed the first ten will cope with these. For a family, ask each person to name a thing from the ancient world they would like to see.

Where can you play it online?

Rounds climb from easy to hard, and the finale counts double.

A word on the sources

Every answer here is tied to a named page, which I re-read on 17 October 2026. Ancient history is a field where stories outrun evidence, so where the bank says 'probably' or 'may have', I have kept those words. A quiz is a good place to be honest about what is known.

Ahmed Moaz builds Boardit, a free browser game site.