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
- Two layers of pith strips hammered and dried
- Signs pressed into wet clay
- More than 1,000 signs
Jun puts the papyrus steps in order. Which comes first?
- Hammer the two layers
- Dry the sheet under pressure
- Cut the pith into strips
- Join sheets into a scroll
Why lay the second layer of strips at right angles to the first, Kira asks?
- So the sheet is round
- So it can be written on with wet clay tablets
- So the sheet holds together both ways
- So the strips grow again
Why join papyrus sheets into scrolls, Luz asks?
- To turn them into boats
- To make room for longer writing
- Because each sheet was a scroll
- To make the sheets heavier
A shaduf has a counterweight on the end of the pole away from the bucket. How does that help, Milo asks?
- It pumps the water uphill
- It balances the bucket, so lifting is easier
- It stops water from spilling
- 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 Nile flood
- Water could be lifted up from the low river
- It brought rain to the fields
- 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
- Egypt invented it, for certain
- Mesopotamia invented it, for certain
- No one used a shaduf
Why might hieroglyphs take longer to learn than our alphabet, Ren asks?
- There were far fewer signs than letters in our alphabet
- They were written in clay
- They had no signs for sounds
- There were more than 1,000 signs to learn
Quicker scripts, hieratic and demotic, came from hieroglyphs. Why might writers want a quicker script, Tala asks?
- To make writing harder to read
- Because hieroglyphs came from them
- To write everyday records faster
- To carve stone more deeply
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