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Third Reading: Text-Dependent Questioning
Now read the text again, this time reading to respond to the Key Ideas and Details text-based questions. As your class discusses the text, write your responses to each question and highlight or underline the textual evidence that supports your answer. During discussions, you may also want to annotate the texts to record a new or different meaning of the texts.
Background Information: The first text is an excerpt from The Fihrist, a tenth-century text written by Ibn al-Nadim, a scholar and bookseller who lived in Baghdad. Most of the work is a catalog of books that were available in Arabic at the time, including books that were originally written in Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, and Persian. Part of the text also includes an account of visiting the pyramids of Egypt.
The next text includes excerpts from a website published by National Geographic, as part of its travel information service. These excerpts give information about some of the sites mentioned in the previous text.
Nonfiction Book
From The Fihrist By Ibn al-Nadim
1 These monuments—that is, the pyramids—have a length of 480 cubits and a
width that is also 480 cubits. The edifice recedes as it rises from the base and at the summit the dimensions are only 40 cubits; this was done intentionally and by design. In the middle of the plateau a beautiful chamber was built, inside of which a sort of mausoleum was set up. At the top of the tomb are two magnificent, perfectly dressed blocks, surmounted by two stone statues representing a man and a woman facing each other. The man holds in his hand a stone tablet covered with writing and the woman a mirror and a gold tablet decorated with wonderful carvings. Between the two pedestals is a stone vessel sealed with a gold lid; lifting the lid, one perceives a sort of odourless dried resin in which has been placed a gold box enclosing a quantity of blood, which, upon exposure to the air, shows the coagulation peculiar to blood, then dries up. The tombs are sealed with stone lids that, when withdrawn, reveal, in one of the tombs, a man lying on his back, perfectly preserved and dried; his flesh, as well as his hair, is still visible. In the neighbouring sarcophagus is the body of a woman in the same position and the same condition as the man.
2 The pavement is pierced by a man sized passage that plunges like a tunnel; its vault is made of stone, and one finds there portraits and seated or standing statues, and a quantity of other things, the meaning of which is not known.
key ideas and deTails
While the tone of the first text is primarily reserved and more objective than the second text, what diction shows that the speaker was impressed by his visit to the pyramids?
key ideas and deTails
Choose one of the details the writer includes in his description of the pyramid. What do you think was his purpose in including that detail?
Close Reading Workshop 5 • Close Reading of Informational Texts in Social Studies/History 65
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