44 Ancient Egypt Facts That Separate Myth From Truth

Published November 11, 2017
Updated November 7, 2023

From who really built the pyramids to Cleopatra's favorite prank, these are the most fascinating Ancient Egypt facts you'll ever read.

Ancient Egypt Facts
Servants were sometimes smeared with honey in order to attract flies away from the pharaoh.

Bandages Of Mummies
The bandages of a mummy could stretch out to one mile (1.6 kilometers) when unwrapped.

Drinking Beer Ancient Egypt Facts
Beer was a primary source of nutrition for most Ancient Egyptians and was consumed daily.

Facts About Ancient Egyptian Civilization
Cleopatra's parents were likely brother and sister and she herself married both of her own brothers at different times.

Pyramids Werent Built By Slaves
A common myth, perpetuated by the Greek historian Herodotus, is that the Great Pyramid was built by 100,000 slaves. Archaeological evidence indicates that the Great Pyramid was actually built by a workforce of 5,000 permanent, salaried employees and up to 20,000 temporary workers.

Beer In Ancient Egypt
Beer was so important to Ancient Egyptians that it could be used as currency.

Funny Ancient Egypt Facts
One of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's favorite pranks was to get drunk, don disguises, and play practical jokes on people in the streets.

Ancient Egypt Facts Makeup
Both men and women in Ancient Egypt wore makeup — some researchers believe it was effective as a sunscreen given its prevalence of use.

Cats
Ancient Egyptians mummified not only humans but animals as well, including many cats and at least one crocodile.

Cleopatra Was Greek Macedonian
Even though she's one of the most famous historical figures associated with Ancient Egypt, Cleopatra wasn't actually Egyptian. She was Greek Macedonian, descended from one of Alexander the Great's lieutenants.

Cause Of King Tuts Death
Historians believe that King Tut may have been killed by a hippopotamus. His body was embalmed without his heart or chest, leading some Egyptologists to conclude that he was bitten by a hippopotamus while hunting.

Social Standing In Ancient Egypt
Men and women of similar social status were treated as equals in the eyes of the law. This meant that women could own, earn, buy, sell, and inherit property, and also had the right to divorce and remarry.

Toilets Egyptian Tombs
Toilets were built into some Ancient Egyptian tombs.

Interesting Ancient Egypt Facts
The historical period commonly thought of as "Ancient Egypt" lasted far longer than most people realize. For example, Cleopatra lived closer in time to the present than she did to the building of the Great Pyramids.

Ground Up Mummies
Ancient Egyptian mummies were repurposed several thousand years later when Renaissance artists ground them up and used them to create a prized shade of paint known as "mummy brown."

Pharaohs
Pharaohs are depicted as being statuesque, but members of the nobility were often obese and in poor health because of the Egyptian diet of meat, beer, wine, bread, and honey. Modern examinations of mummies indicate that many Egyptian rulers were unhealthy, overweight, and often suffered from diabetes.

Cleopatra
Cleopatra studied math, philosophy, and astronomy and spoke at least 12 languages, despite being remembered largely for her beauty today.

Drugs In Ancient Egypt
The mummy of priestess Henut Taui was later found to contain traces of cocaine, hashish, and nicotine, all substances originally unique to the Americas, thus fueling the theory that the Ancient Egyptians may have reached the New World thousands of years before Columbus.

Mummifying Bodies In Ancient Egypt
When a body was mummified, the brain was removed through one of the nostrils, and the intestines were also removed and placed in canopic jars. The only internal organ that was not removed was the heart because Ancient Egyptians considered it to be the seat of the soul.

Everyday Items
Everyday items such as paper, keys, and locks were invented in Ancient Egypt.

Invention Of Mummification
The Ancient Egyptians didn't invent mummification. In fact, South Americans had been doing it for 2,000 years prior.

King Tut History
King Tut left only a small mark on Ancient Egyptian history, and only holds his current place in the popular imagination today because of the 1922 discovery of his nearly intact tomb.

Loincloths
Some historians theorize that loincloths were used as condoms in Ancient Egypt to protect against disease.

Interesting Facts About Ancient Egyptian Civilization
Pharaoh's hair was considered sacred and was never to be seen. He or she would always wear a crown, or a headdress called a nemes, made famous by Tutankhamen's golden mask.

Female Pharaohs
Three female pharaohs existed, with most historians considering Hatshepsut to have been the greatest.

Great Pyramid Of Giza
The Great Pyramid of Giza contains an estimated 2,300,000 separate stone blocks.

King Tut Sandals
King Tut wore sandals with his enemies painted on the soles so that wherever he went, he was trampling on his foes.

Mythology Of Nile Flooding
Ancient Egyptians believed that the tears of the goddess Isis made the Nile overflow every year and would celebrate with a festival called the "Night of the Tear Drop."

Buried With Pharaohs
In the early days of Ancient Egypt, servants were buried with their pharaohs. In later times, they used model servants called shabti to replace them.

Pets In Ancient Egypt
While Egyptians are famed for their love of cats, they also kept a wide array of other animals as pets, including hawks, ibises, dogs, lions, monkeys, and baboons.

Gods In Ancient Egypt
More than 1,000 different gods and goddesses were worshipped in Ancient Egypt.

King Ramses The Great
Ramses the Great had eight wives and nearly 100 concubines and was over 90 years old when he died in 1213 BC.

Great Pyramid Fact
The Great Pyramid of Giza was Earth's tallest manmade structure for nearly 4,000 years.

Pronounciation Of Hieroglyphics
Because hieroglyphics contained no vowels, we'll never know for sure how Ancient Egyptians actually pronounced their words.

Pyramids In Egypt
Most Ancient Egyptian pyramids were built as tombs for pharaohs and their families. To date, more than 130 pyramids have been discovered in Egypt.

Interesting Facts About Ancient Egypt Hieroglyphs
Hieroglyphs, the 2,000 characters used in formal Ancient Egyptian writing, make up one of the oldest writing systems in the history of human civilization.

Scarab Beetle
In Ancient Egypt, the scarab beetle was sacred and symbolized life after death and resurrection.

Toothpaste
The Ancient Egyptians invented toothpaste — albeit one made of pepper, iris flowers, and rock salt.

Conception Of Earth
Ancient Egyptians believed that the Earth was flat and round (like a pancake) and that the Nile flowed through the center of it.

Facts About Ancient Egypt
The Great Pyramid of Giza has vents that point to the constellation of Orion so that a spirit could fly straight to the heavens.

Calendars In Egyptian Civilization
Ancient Egyptians used three different calendars: an astronomical calendar, a lunar calendar, and an everyday farming calendar.

Why Ancient Egyptians Preserved The Dead
Ancient Egyptians believed that by preserving a dead person's body -- which they did through the process of mummification -- that their soul would live on in the afterlife forever.

Imhotep First Physician Architect Engineer
Ancient Egyptian polymath Imhotep is often considered to be the first physician, the first engineer, and the first architect.

Weird Ancient Egypt Facts
Ancient Egyptian fly swatters were sometimes made with giraffe tails.

They didn't invent mummification, they didn't use slaves to build the pyramids, and Cleopatra, their most famous queen, wasn't even Egyptian.

With a civilization as old and mysterious as Ancient Egypt, it's easy for most of us to hold onto a lot of misconceptions. And when we start debunking those myths and getting to the truth, we realize that there are mountains of Ancient Egypt facts that will positively astound us all.

Did you know, for example, that servants were sometimes smeared with honey in order to attract flies away from the pharaoh? Or that beer was a primary source of nutrition for most Ancient Egyptians and was consumed daily.

Discover more Ancient Egypt facts in the gallery above.


After this look at the most interesting Ancient Egypt facts, see what it was like when King Tut's tomb was first opened. Then, discover some of the most interesting history facts you'll ever read.

author
John Kuroski
author
John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of interest include modern history and true crime.
editor
John Kuroski
editor
John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of interest include modern history and true crime.