What jobs could the scribe get after the graduation from the school

I. Analyze the structure of the following words, denote parts of speech and translate the words.

Highly utterance higher

Professional punishment priesthood

Doubtless charioteer comfortable

II. Give Russian equivalents to the following words.

Officials, career, a palace, a temple, a scribe, reign, utterance, to wrestle, hieroglyphs, the literary language, extracts, the vernacular language, papyrus, potsherds, flakes of limestone, stock-letters, charioteer, evidence, profit, the treasury, the king’s private secretary, the village letter-writer, petty attorney, occupation, the merit, the priesthood.

III. Read the sentences, find predicates, choose their tense-voice forms and translate the sentences.

Officials were required for all posts in the highly centralized administration.

A) Past Indefinite Active b) Past Indefinite Passive c) Past Continuous

Active

The wealth of school exercises has survived at Deir el Medina.

A) Present Perfect Active b) Present Perfect Passive c) Present Indefinite

Passive

Papyrus was too expensive for beginners to spoil.

A) Past Continuous Active b) Past Indefinite Passive c) Past Indefinite Active

A scribe had graduated from school.

A) Past Indefinite Active b) Past Perfect Active c) Past Perfect Passive

I. Answer the following questions.

Where did a person have to be educated if he wished to follow a professional career?

How many stages of learning can we find in the text?

What subjects were learned incidentically together with writing?

Was the learning easy?

What was easier to be a scribe or to be a farmer?

What for were the girls taught to read and write?

What jobs could the scribe get after the graduation from the school

Text 2

THE INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION

Part I.

In recent years archeological excavations have been carried on at Mohenjo-Daro in the Larkana district, Sind and at Harappa in the Montgomery district of the Punjab. These and smaller trial excavations at various other sites have proved beyond doubt that some four or five thousand years ago a highly civilized state flourished in these regions. The antiquity of civilization in India is thus carried back nearly to the same period which witnessed the growth of ancient civilizations in Egypt, Assyria and Babylonia. The valley of the Indus thus takes its rank with the valleys of the Nile, the Tigris and the Euphrates as having contributed to the most ancient phase of human civilization of which we are yet aware.

Unfortunately we have no written records about the Indus valley civilization comparable to those we possess on respect of the others. A number of seals have been discovered with a few letters engraved on each, but these still remain undeciphered. We are therefore totally ignorant of the political history of the Indus valley and are not in a position to form an adequate idea of its culture and civilization. We possess, at best, a vague and general idea of the subject which is entirely derived from a careful examination of the objects unearthed at Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa.

Mohenjo-Daro – Mount of the Dead – is the local name of a high mount situated in the plains of Larkana in a narrow strip of land between the main bed of the Indus river and the western Nara canal. The surrounding region is wonderfully fertile and is called even today Nakhlistan, or the “Garden of Sind”. Here a city was built some five thousand years ago. This city was successively destroyed and rebuilt no less than seven times, the inundation of the Indus being perhaps the chief agency of destruction. The rebuilding did not always immediately follow the destruction, but sometimes the city remained in ruins for a considerable period before a new city rose upon them. Thus, after the foundation of the city, many centuries passed before it was finally abandoned.

The city is fairly big. The dwelling houses are many in number and vary in size from a small building with two rooms to a palatial structure having a frontage of 26 meters and a depth of 29,5 meters, with outer walls 1,25 meters thick. They are made of brick which are usually well burnt and of good quality. The big houses have two or more storeys and are furnished with paved floors and courtyards, doors, windows and narrow stairways. It is especially noteworthy that almost every house has wells, drains and bathrooms.

In addition to the numerous dwelling-houses, we find a few spacious buildings of elaborate structure and design. Some of these contain large pillared halls, one of them measuring 24 square meters. The exact nature and purpose of these buildings cannot be ascertained. They are thought to have been palaces, temples or municipal halls.

The most imposing structure in the city is the Great Bath. It consists of a large open quadrangle in the centre with galleries and rooms on all sides. In the centre of the quadrangle is a large swimming enclosure, 12 meters long, 7 meters wide and about 2,4 meters deep. It has a flight of steps at either end and is fed by a well situated in one of the adjoining rooms. The water is discharged by a huge drain with a corbelled roof more than 1,8 meters in height. The Great Bath is 55 meters long and 33 meters wide, and its outer walls are about 2,4 meters thick. The solidity of the construction is amply borne out by the fact that it has successfully withstood the ravages of five thousand years.

The streets of the city are wide and straight and are furnished with an elaborate drainage system together with soak-pits for sediment.

On the whole, the ruins leave no doubt that there was on this site a large, populous and flourishing town whose inhabitants freely enjoyed, to a degree unknown elsewhere in the ancient world, not only the sanitary conveniences but also the luxuries and comforts of a highly developed municipal life. We must also conclude that the art of building had reached a high degree of perfection.

Proper names:

Mohenjo-Daro - /mou’hendζou ‘da:rou/

Larkana - /la:’ka:n/

Sind - /sind/

Harappa - /h’ræp/

Montgomery - /mntg’/\mri/

Punjab –/’p/\ndζb/

Euphrates - /ju:’freiti:s/

Nakhlistan - /’na:klista:n/

PHONETIC EXERCISES.

I. Pronounce the following words paying attention to the rules of pronunciation of stressed vowels.

/ei/ excavation, ancient, engraved, remained, palatial, drainage