托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Ancient Egyptian Writing

托福阅读真题+题目+答案：Ancient Egyptian Writing

Paragraph 1: The ancient Egyptians' hieroglyphs (writing) could not be deciphered until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, a meter-high fragment of dark grey stone, in a place known as Rosetta (today's el-Rashid). The Rosetta Stone has since become one of the most famous pieces of rock in the world. It was dug up by chance in 1799 by Napoleon Bonaparte's soldiers, during the French occupation of Egypt. Fortunately the officer who found it realized it was a significant artifact and immediately ensured its safe-keeping. What made it special was that it had the same bit of text inscribed in three different scripts. The top section was written in formal hieroglyphs, which at the time they were carved, around 196 B.C.E., had been the traditional script for stone inscriptions. The middle section was written in the everyday script of literate Egyptians, the informal demotic hieroglyphs, and at the bottom was Egypt's then language of officialdom, Greek. When the initial shoulder-high slab of stone, or stela (a decorated commemorative stone), had fallen from the wall of a temple, it broke in such a way that its bottom half included enough of the known Greek and the unknown Egyptian scripts for the correspondence between the scripts to be discovered. While parts of the surface were damaged, the bottom Greek script was able to provide some of the clues that eventually led the French scholar Jean-Francois Champollion to complete the hieroglyphs decipherment in 1822. With the ancient language unlocked, a more informed study of Egyptian culture could begin.

1. According to paragraph 1, how was the Rosetta Stone discovered?

O French scholars traveled to Rosetta to study the hieroglyphs there.

O Napoleon Bonaparte ordered his soldiers to search for artifacts containing hieroglyphs.

O Several hieroglyphic scripts indicated the location of the Rosetta Stone.

O A French officer recognized the value of an ancient artifact.

2. Which of the following can be inferred from paragraph 1 about the function of the Rosetta Stone in ancient times?

O It included information about an Egyptian temple.

O It included messages sent to Egypt by the Greeks.

O It was a translation tool used by literate Egyptians.

O It was a commemorative stone on a building wall.

3. According to paragraph 1, why was the work of Jean-Francois Champollion important?

O He realized that the Egyptian and Greek scripts on the Rosetta Stone correspond to each other.

O He contributed to the study of ancient Egypt by deciphering Egypt's writing system.

O He was the first scholar to study the Egyptian script on the Rosetta Stone.

O He realized that the Rosetta Stone contains descriptions of important elements of Egyptian culture.

Paragraph 2: The Rosetta Stone's two hieroglyphic scripts provide a vivid example of the tendency for all scripts to develop in two main directions, a formal script for ceremony or public display, and an informal one for everyday use. Writing is never solely utilitarian and commonplace, nor is it always beautiful and exclusive. Both sets of needs have to be served. The first informal or cursive hieroglyphic to be developed is called hieratic (meaning priestly). Its form was a response to the implements used and the surface it was written on. The fluid, linear, and overtly handwritten shapes of hieratic were a natural consequence of ink flowing off the tip of the Egyptian scribes pen or brush and onto the smooth sheets of papyrus (a thick paperlike material made from the papyrus plant). An example of a classic poem that was made in around 1200 B.C.E. by a junior scribe called Inena shows some of the vigor and intricacy of this cursive form. Where previously each hieroglyph would have stood out in splendid isolation, as in the Book of the Dead (a text aimed at assisting a dead person's journey to the afterlife), here many of the pictures are run together, sometimes forming abbreviations or stark contractions of several symbols into smaller single shapes. The way the ink has been pushed and stroked across the papyrus suggests that Inena wrote quickly, though with enough control to set the series of complex word shapes and their dynamic movements along a more or less even baseline (the imaginary line on which the writing appears to sit).

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