Egypt and the Nile: floods, farming, pharaohs, pyramids and hieroglyphs
Grade 6 Social Studies Worksheet
Circle the best answer.
Read this first
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?
- Signs pressed into wet clay
- Two layers of pith strips hammered and dried
- A pole on a pivot with a bucket
- More than 1,000 signs
The cell marked ? is blank. Bo's chart has a blank: what was a shaduf used for?
- Cutting pyramid stone
- Measuring the flood's height
- Writing on scrolls
- Lifting water from the river to fields
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?
- 26, like our alphabet
- More than 1,000
- About 10
- About 60
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
Why join papyrus sheets into scrolls, Luz asks?
- To make the sheets heavier
- Because each sheet was a scroll
- To make room for longer writing
- To turn them into boats
A shaduf has a counterweight on the end of the pole away from the bucket. How does that help, Milo asks?
- It balances the bucket, so lifting is easier
- It stops water from spilling
- It pumps the water uphill
- It makes the bucket heavier
Why would a shaduf help in a land where the Nile was low for part of the year, Noah asks?
- It made the fields lower
- It brought rain to the fields
- Water could be lifted up from the low river
- It made the Nile flood
Some historians think the shaduf began in Mesopotamia; others think Egyptians invented it. What should Pia write?
- No one used a shaduf
- Its origin is debated
- Egypt invented it, for certain
- Mesopotamia invented it, for certain
Why might hieroglyphs take longer to learn than our alphabet, Ren asks?
- They were written in clay
- There were far fewer signs than letters in our alphabet
- There were more than 1,000 signs to learn
- They had no signs for sounds
Which two items in the chart worked together for writing, Zee asks?
- Papyrus sheets and Egyptian scripts
- Clay tablets and a reed pen with black ink
- The shaduf and hieroglyphs
- The shaduf and papyrus