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TPO 26—3 Sumer and the First Cities of the Ancient Near East
原文：
【1】The earliest of the city states of the ancient Near East appeared at the southern end of the Mesopotamian plain, the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq. It was here that the civilization known as Sumer emerged in its earliest form in the fifth millennium. At first sight, the
plain did not appear to be a likely home for a civilization. There were few natural resources, no timber, stone, or metals. Rainfall was limited, and what water there was rushed across the plain in the annual flood of melted snow. As the plain fell only 20 meters in 500 kilometers, the beds of the rivers shifted constantly. It was this that made the organization of irrigation, particularly the building of canals to channel and prerve the water, esntial. Once this was done and the silt carried down by the rivers was planted, the rewards were rich: four to five times what rain-fed earth would produce. It was the conditions that allowed an elite to emerge, probably as an organizing class, and to sustain itlf through the control of surplus crops.
【2】It is difficult to isolate the factors that led to the next development—the emergence of urban ttlements. The earliest, that of Eridu, about 4500 B.C.E., and Uruk, a thousand years later, center on impressive temple complexes built of mud brick. In some way, the elite had associated themlves with the power of the gods. Uruk, for instance, had two patron gods—Anu, the god of the sky and sovereign of all other gods, and Inanna, a goddess of love and war—and there were others, patrons of different cities. Human beings were at their mercy. The biblical story of
the Flood may originate in Sumer. In the earliest version, the gods destroy the human race becau its clamor had been so disturbing to them.
【3】It ud to be believed that before 3000 B.C.E. the political and economic life of the cities was centered on their temples, but it now ems probable that the cities had cular rulers from earliest times. Within the city lived administrators, craftspeople, and merchants. (Trading was important, as so many raw materials, the miprecious stones for the decoration of the temples, timbers for roofs, and all metals, had to be imported.) An increasingly sophisticated system of administration led in about 3300 B.C.E. to the appearance of writing. The earliest script was bad on logograms, with a symbol being ud to express a whole word. The logograms were incid on damp clay tablets with a stylus with a wedge shape at its end. (The Romans called the shape cuneus and this gives the script its name of cuneiform.) Two thousand logograms have been recorded from the early centuries of writing.
A more economical approach was to u a sign to express not a whole word but a single syllable. (To take an example: the Sumerian word for " head” was “sag.” Whenever a word including a syllable in which the sound “sag” was to be written, the sign for “sag" could be ud t o express that syllable with the remaining syllables of the word expresd by other signs.) By 2300 B.C.E. the number of signs required had been reduced to 600, and the range of words that could be expresd had widened. Texts dealing with economic matters predominated, as they always had done; but at this point works of theology, literature, history, and law also appeared.
【4】Other innovations of the late fourth millennium include the wheel, probably developed first as a more efficient way of making pottery and then transferred to transport. A tablet engraved about 3000 B.C.E. provides the earliest known example from Sumer, a roofed boxlike sledge mounted on four solid wheels. A major development was the discovery, again about 3000 B.C.E., that if copper, which had been known in Mesopotamia since about 3500 B.C.E., was mixed with tin, a much harder metal, bronze, would result. Although copper and stone tools continued to be ud, bronze was far more successful in creating sharp edges that could be ud as anything from saws and scythes to weapons. The period from 3000 to 1000 B.C.E., when the u of bronze became widespread, is normally referred to as the Bronze Age.
题目：
1.Which of the following is NOT mentioned in paragraph 1 as a disadvantage of the Mesopotamian plain?
A.There was not very much rainfall for most of the year.
B.Melting snow caud flooding every year.
C.The silt deposited by rivers damaged crops.
D.Timber, stone and metals were not readily available.
2.According to paragraph 1, which of the following made it possible for anelite to emerge?
A.New crops were developed that were better suited to conditions on the眼睛用英语怎么读
Mesopotamian plain.
B.The richest individuals managed to gain control of the most valuable cropland.
打臀缝C.Control over the few available natural resources made some people four to five times richer than everyone el.
D.The building of canals to increa agricultural output required organization.
3.The word “sustain”in the passage（paragraph 1）is clost in meaning to
A.defend.
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B.promote.
林清玄简介C.maintain.
白塔山D.transform.
4.According to paragraph 2, Eridu and Uruk are examples of urbanttlements that
A.lacked the features usually found in other early urban ttlements.
B.developed around religious buildings.
D.were mysteriously destroyed and abandoned.
5.The word “sovereign"in the passage is clost in meaning to
B.master.
C.defender.
6.According to paragraph 3, which of the following led to the appearanceof writing?
荞麦面怎么做A.An increasingly sophisticated administrative system.
火车和动车的区别
