Question 19 • CMS 2025-2026 English I CREDIT RECOVERY
Read the excerpt from "The Rosetta Stone.” Egyptian scripts were replaced with Coptic, which included six demotic characters. In the ninth century, Arab scholar Abu Bakr Ahmad Ibn-Wahshiyah was able to partly decipher the hieroglyphs by comparing them to Coptic. But in the eleventh century, it too was replaced, by Arabic. The link was once again severed. For centuries, Western scholars tried to decipher the hieroglyphs, with little success. They were working under a false hypothesis, that the hieroglyphs were pictograms, with each symbol representing an object or an idea. Which is the best summary of this paragraph?
Answer
A
For a long time, scholars from different places tried to figure out the meaning of hieroglyphs, but they mistakenly believed each hieroglyph was a symbol.
B
After Coptic became the prominent script, it was replaced by Arabic, which resulted in breaking society’s connection to ancient times.
C
For many centuries, people who spoke a variety of different languages tried to figure out the meaning of hieroglyphs.
D
Hieroglyphs are letters, not symbols representing a whole idea, which many scholars throughout history were not aware of.
Explanation
The paragraph explains that scholars spent centuries trying to decipher hieroglyphs, but they had little success because they wrongly thought each symbol represented an object or idea. Choice B best summarizes both the long effort and the mistaken belief behind it. Choice A goes too far by claiming hieroglyphs are letters, which the paragraph does not say.
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