Egypt and the Nile: floods, farming, pharaohs, pyramids and hieroglyphs
Grade 6 Social Studies Worksheet
Circle the best answer.
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Egyptian tools and materials
Tool or material How it was made or worked Used for Papyrus sheet strips of papyrus pith laid in two layers at right angles, hammered while moist, dried under pressure writing; sheets were joined into scrolls Shaduf a long pole on a pivot, with a bucket at one end and a counterweight lifting water from the river to the fields Hieroglyphs more than 1,000 different signs for words and sounds formal writing; quicker scripts, hieratic and demotic, came from them How was a papyrus sheet made, Ari asks?
- A pole on a pivot with a bucket
- More than 1,000 signs
- Signs pressed into wet clay
- Two layers of pith strips hammered and dried
The cell marked ? is blank. Bo's chart has a blank: what was a shaduf used for?
- Lifting water from the river to fields
- Cutting pyramid stone
- Writing on scrolls
- Measuring the flood's height
Egyptian tools and materials
Tool or material How it was made or worked Used for Papyrus sheet strips of papyrus pith laid in two layers at right angles, hammered while moist, dried under pressure writing; sheets were joined into scrolls Shaduf a long pole on a pivot, with a bucket at one end and a counterweight lifting water from the river to the fields Hieroglyphs more than 1,000 different signs for words and sounds formal writing; quicker scripts, hieratic and demotic, came from them About how many different signs did hieroglyphs use, Esme asks?
- About 10
- More than 1,000
- 26, like our alphabet
- About 60
Jun puts the papyrus steps in order. Which comes first?
- Join sheets into a scroll
- Cut the pith into strips
- Dry the sheet under pressure
- Hammer the two layers
Why lay the second layer of strips at right angles to the first, Kira asks?
- So the sheet is round
- So the sheet holds together both ways
- So it can be written on with wet clay tablets
- So the strips grow again
A shaduf has a counterweight on the end of the pole away from the bucket. How does that help, Milo asks?
- It makes the bucket heavier
- It balances the bucket, so lifting is easier
- It stops water from spilling
- It pumps the water uphill
Why would a shaduf help in a land where the Nile was low for part of the year, Noah asks?
- It made the Nile flood
- It brought rain to the fields
- Water could be lifted up from the low river
- It made the fields lower
Some historians think the shaduf began in Mesopotamia; others think Egyptians invented it. What should Pia write?
- Its origin is debated
- No one used a shaduf
- Mesopotamia invented it, for certain
- Egypt invented it, for certain
Quicker scripts, hieratic and demotic, came from hieroglyphs. Why might writers want a quicker script, Tala asks?
- To make writing harder to read
- To write everyday records faster
- Because hieroglyphs came from them
- To carve stone more deeply
Which two items in the chart worked together for writing, Zee asks?
- Papyrus sheets and Egyptian scripts
- The shaduf and papyrus
- Clay tablets and a reed pen with black ink
- The shaduf and hieroglyphs