Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.The Nile
The ancient Greek writer Herodotus once described Egypt-with some envy-as'the gift of the Nile'. The Egyptians depend on the river for food, for water and for life. The Ancient Egyptians were able to control and use the Nile, creating the earliest irrigation systems and developing a prosperous {#blank#}1{#/blank#}.
Snaking through the deserts, the Nile would flood almost {#blank#}2{#/blank#} each year in June. Once the water subsided, a rich deposit of sand was left behind, making an excellent topaoil. Seeds were sown, yielding wheat, barley, beans, lentils and leeks. Drought could spell disaster for the Egyptians, so during the dry seasons, they dug basins and channels to deliver water to their land. They also devised simple channels to transfer water at the peak of the flood.
An early system of {#blank#}3{#/blank#} a Nilometer, was used to de determine the size of the floods. Later, during the New Kingdom, a lifting system called a shaduf was used to raise water from the river--{#blank#}4{#/blank#} to the way in which a well is used today.
The Egyptians took up some of the earliest trading missions. Without a(n) {#blank#}5{#/blank#} system they exchanged goods, bringing back timber, precious stones, pottery, spices and animals. Their efforts in medicine were also {#blank#}6{#/blank#} advanced: surgeons performed operations to remove cysts(囊肿). Mummification gave them great understanding of the human body-yet they also relied heavily on various medicines to prevent disease, and discoveries were often confused with superstition(迷信). And while a great deal of time was dedicated to {#blank#}7{#/blank#} the Egyptians thought the stars were gods.
By the 16th century Egypt was under the Ottoman Empire until Britain seized control in 1882. What is now mostly Arabic Egypt only won {#blank#}8{#/blank#} from Britain after World War Ⅱ. The Suez Canal, opened in 1869, {#blank#}9{#/blank#}the country as a center for world transportation. But it, and the completion of the Aswan High Dam in 1971 {#blank#}10{#/blank#} the ecology of the Nile, which now struggles to satisfy the country's rapidly growing population, currently more than 76 million-the largest in the Arab world.
