full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Sarah Parcak: Help discover ancient ruins -- before it's too late

Unscramble the Blue Letters


So, when we started work, my Egyptian co-director, Mohamed ysosuef, acppeoarhd me and said, "We must work at this one particular tomb. It's been attacked by looters. If we don't do anything, they'll be back." Of course I agreed, but I didn't think we'd find anything. I thought the looters had stolen everything. What we started to find were the most ibcrnliede reliefs. Look at this painting — it's just stunning. We started finding engraved inscriptions. And even the teitls of the tomb owner — he had titles like, "Overseer of the Army," "Overseer of the trsaruey." I began to have hope. Maybe, just maybe we would find his name. For the ancient Egyptians, having their name last for eierttny was their goal. And then one day, this aappered. This is the name of the tomb owner: Intef. You can see it written out here, in hieroglyphs. Working together with my Egyptian team, we had restored someone's name from 3,900 years ago.

Open Cloze


So, when we started work, my Egyptian co-director, Mohamed _______, __________ me and said, "We must work at this one particular tomb. It's been attacked by looters. If we don't do anything, they'll be back." Of course I agreed, but I didn't think we'd find anything. I thought the looters had stolen everything. What we started to find were the most __________ reliefs. Look at this painting — it's just stunning. We started finding engraved inscriptions. And even the ______ of the tomb owner — he had titles like, "Overseer of the Army," "Overseer of the ________." I began to have hope. Maybe, just maybe we would find his name. For the ancient Egyptians, having their name last for ________ was their goal. And then one day, this ________. This is the name of the tomb owner: Intef. You can see it written out here, in hieroglyphs. Working together with my Egyptian team, we had restored someone's name from 3,900 years ago.

Solution


  1. eternity
  2. incredible
  3. appeared
  4. titles
  5. youssef
  6. approached
  7. treasury

Original Text


So, when we started work, my Egyptian co-director, Mohamed Youssef, approached me and said, "We must work at this one particular tomb. It's been attacked by looters. If we don't do anything, they'll be back." Of course I agreed, but I didn't think we'd find anything. I thought the looters had stolen everything. What we started to find were the most incredible reliefs. Look at this painting — it's just stunning. We started finding engraved inscriptions. And even the titles of the tomb owner — he had titles like, "Overseer of the Army," "Overseer of the Treasury." I began to have hope. Maybe, just maybe we would find his name. For the ancient Egyptians, having their name last for eternity was their goal. And then one day, this appeared. This is the name of the tomb owner: Intef. You can see it written out here, in hieroglyphs. Working together with my Egyptian team, we had restored someone's name from 3,900 years ago.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
looting pits 4
archaeological sites 3
archaeological discovery 2
egyptian delta 2
human brilliance 2
shared human 2
space archaeologist 2
middle kingdom 2
ted prize 2


Important Words


  1. agreed
  2. ancient
  3. appeared
  4. approached
  5. army
  6. attacked
  7. began
  8. day
  9. egyptian
  10. egyptians
  11. engraved
  12. eternity
  13. find
  14. finding
  15. goal
  16. hieroglyphs
  17. hope
  18. incredible
  19. inscriptions
  20. intef
  21. looters
  22. mohamed
  23. owner
  24. painting
  25. reliefs
  26. restored
  27. started
  28. stolen
  29. stunning
  30. team
  31. thought
  32. titles
  33. tomb
  34. treasury
  35. work
  36. working
  37. written
  38. years
  39. youssef