QUESTION 1 / 20 · EGYPTEasy
What writing material did ancient Egyptians make from a reed that grows along the Nile?
ROUND 1 OF 6 · 0 RIGHT
Which is closer in time?
Our minds compress the distant past, so events thousands of years apart feel like neighbours. Pick the event that's closer in time to the one in the middle, then see the real gaps.
CLOSER TOFounding of Rome753 BC
What this ancient civilizations quiz covers, in short
Twenty multiple-choice questions, four on each of five areas: ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, ancient Greece, Rome, and the early civilizations of Asia and the Americas. They cover rulers, writing, monuments and key dates from about 3000 BC to AD 500.
Many ancient dates are approximate and scholars still debate some of them; where that matters, the question uses the traditional or most widely cited date. The quiz is our own and not normed.
By What's Your IQ · Reviewed 4 Oct 2026- Format
- 20 multiple-choice questions, 4 options each
- Areas
- Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, Asia and the Americas
- Period
- About 3000 BC to AD 500
- Bonus
- 6-round time-gap game
Still unreadthe Indus Valley scriptThousands of short inscriptions survive from one of the largest ancient civilizations, yet no one can read them. Much of what we know about the ancient world depended on cracking scripts.1,2
1822Hieroglyphs cracked.Champollion used the Rosetta Stone's Greek text to read Egyptian hieroglyphs, opening 3,000 years of records.
1850sCuneiform read.Scholars including Henry Rawlinson deciphered it using a trilingual inscription carved on a cliff at Behistun, in Iran.
1952Linear B solved.Michael Ventris showed that this Bronze Age script from Crete and Greece wrote an early form of Greek.
TodayStill waiting.The Indus script, Linear A and Rongorongo remain undeciphered.
- Parkinson, R. (1999). Cracking codes: The Rosetta Stone and decipherment. British Museum Press.
- Chadwick, J. (1958). The decipherment of Linear B. Cambridge University Press.