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2017 ‫מועד ספטמבר‬ - 39 - ‫ פרק ראשון‬- ‫ אנגלית‬

Reading Comprehension

This part consists of two passages, each followed by several related questions. For each
question, choose the most appropriate answer based on the text.

Text I (Questions 13-17)

(1) At the end of the 18th century, the French army took over many parts of Egypt and
built a number of army posts. One of these was near the town of el-Rashid, which the
French called Rosetta. In the summer of 1799, soldiers building a wall at the Rosetta
fort found a large, flat stone. The stone had three different kinds of writing carved into

(5) it.

French and British experts spent more than twenty years trying to understand the
writing on the stone, which became known as the Rosetta Stone. They realized that the
inscriptions all said the same thing but were written in two different languages and three
scripts. One language was ancient Greek, used by Egypt's rulers starting in the fourth

(10) century BCE. The other language was ancient Egyptian, which was written in Demotic
script, the form of writing used by most educated Egyptians, and in hieroglyphics,
which was used for religious documents. The Rosetta Stone was inscribed in 196 BCE
to honor King Ptolemy V for the many good things he had done for the people of Egypt.
It was inscribed in three scripts so that the king, his officials, and the country's religious

(15) leaders could all read it.

However, the Rosetta Stone did much more than honor King Ptolemy V. It allowed
modern-day scholars to understand hieroglyphics for the first time. Once the experts
studying the stone realized that the inscriptions all said the same thing, they were able
to use their knowledge of ancient Greek to decipher the hieroglyphics. This made it

(20) possible for generations of researchers to read other texts in hieroglyphics and learn
much about ancient Egypt.

Questions

13. According to the first paragraph, Rosetta -

(1) means stone
(2) is a city in France
(3) was one of the soldiers who found the stone
(4) was the French name for el-Rashid

)‫© כל הזכויות שמורות למרכז ארצי לבחינות ולהערכה (ע"ר‬

.‫ בלא אישור בכתב מהמרכז הארצי לבחינות ולהערכה‬- ‫ כולה או חלקים ממנה‬- ‫ או ללמדה‬,‫אין להעתיק או להפיץ בחינה זו או קטעים ממנה בכל צורה ובכל אמצעי‬