英语阅读新视野第2课

The Sphinx 狮身人面像

Before You Read 阅前思考

Answer the following questions.

1. What do you know about the monument in the picture?

2. Do you know any other Egyptian monuments?

3. What are some famous monuments in your country?

Target Vocabulary 目标词汇

Match each word with the best meaning.

1. archaeologist a. to make something look like it did when it was new

2. cane b. easy to see

3. crawl c. a stick made of wood or metal used to help a person walk

4. monument d. to move slowly and close to the ground

5. restore e. a person, animal, or thing made from wood, stone, or metal

6. riddle f. to show great respect for

7. statue g. a question that requires cleverness to answer

8. strangle h. to kill someone by squeezing their neck so they can’t breathe

9. visible i. a sculpture or building built in memory of a person or historical event

10. worship j. a person who studies historical people and cultures by looking at old

things

Reading Passage 阅读文章

For any tourist visiting Egypt, there are two things that everyone must see. The first is the 137-meter-high Great Pyramid of Giza, the largest of all the pyramids in Egypt. The second is the Great Sphinx of Giza, a sculpture with the body of a lion and the head of a man, which stands 20 meters tall and 73 meters long.

The origin of the Great Sphinx of Giza goes back 5, 000 years. Although many sphinx sculptures have been found over the years, researchers believe that the Great Sphinx which guards the pyramids in Giza was actually the first one to be made (around 2600-2500 B. C.). The head of the Sphinx represents Khafre, the Pharaoh who ruled Egypt at that time.

About two thousand years later, around 570 B. C., sand havd covered all but the head of the Great Sphinx. The people living in the area had forgotten the history of the statue, so they imagined that the head represented the sun god Ra and began worshiping it. The son of Pharaoh Amenhotep Ⅱ heard the head speak to him in a dream. The Sphinx’s head made him promise to clear the sand from the statue’s body. The son, Thutmose, kept his word and did what he was told in the dream. He also built walls around the statue to prevent the sand from covering it again. After all of the sand was cleared away, Thutmose made a large stone tablet that told the story of his dream. He placed this tablet between the town front feet of the Sphinx, where it stands to this day.

For hundreds of years, the Sphinx attracted people both as a religious monument and as a work of art. But eventually, the desert sand once again covered the Sphinx, leaving only the head visible. It was not until the 1800s that archaeologists began clearing the sand from the statue and began researching the long history of the Sphinx. At last, in the 1920s, all of the sand was finally cleared