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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How long has Sinuhe been in exile at the beginning of the novel?
(a) Three months.
(b) 15 years.
(c) 2,000 years.
(d) Three years.

2. How does Sinuhe get his medicines?
(a) His father mixes them for him.
(b) He makes them.
(c) He buys them from Crete.
(d) His mother makes all the medicines.

3. In the House of Death what is the job of Ramose?
(a) To embalm the body.
(b) To study the brain.
(c) To remove the brain.
(d) To weigh the heart.

4. Where does Sinuhe bury his parents?
(a) Near the temple of Ammon.
(b) In a pauper's cemetary.
(c) In the desert.
(d) Near the entrance of a royal tomb.

5. How is life different for a physician in Syria compared to Egypt?
(a) A physician must be documented by the king.
(b) A physician does not treat poor people.
(c) The physician must seek out patients instead of them coming to him.
(d) A physician get paid monthly.

Short Answer Questions

1. What, according to Sinuhe's father, is the most important thing for a young man to learn if he wants to be leader among his people?

2. When the prince is crowned, who is his royal consort?

3. Where are people buried near Thebes?

4. Other than Ptahor, whom does Sinuhe's father ask to dinner?

5. Who comes upon Amenhotep and Sinuhe in the desert?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the scarab to Kaptah? What is the scarab to Sinuhe? How do the two belief systems differ? How does Kaptah anoint the scarab?

2. When Ptahor is opening the skull of the pharaoh, the young prince steps forward and speaks of a blessing from the god Aton. How does Ptahor react to this? Why does he react as he does?

3. When Sinuhe opens a skull and finds that the "disease had laid its egg" what does he mean by that? What is the egg inside the man's head? What does Sinuhe do with it? How does he repair the opening? What is significant about the fact that the man falls from a wall three days later and breaks his neck and dies? What is that supposed to symbolize?

4. Sinuhe meets a man in the City of Dead when he buries his parents. What is this man's story a moral for in the story? What lesson does this impart to Sinuhe or to the reader? What message is the author trying to tell?

5. Why does Horemheb want Sinuhe to be his spy? What does Sinuhe have to offer that others cannot? What does Sinuhe have to gain from this experience? Will this affect Sinuhe's life if and when he returns to Egypt? Why? Why not?

6. Why does Sinuhe feel that Mitanni is doomed? Where is Mitanni in relation to other countries? Why does this mean extinction for these people?

7. What is important about being able to read more than one Egyptian character at a time? How does this make the reader different in the eyes of others?

8. What are the two truths of the young prince and Horemheb? How are they in conflict from the beginning? How does Horemheb argue with the sickly young prince about his truth when he first meets him? What does Horemheb fear of the future?

9. In Babylon, the astrologers know the heavenly bodies. What does this tell us about the people of Babylon? Is this advanced science for the time? Why? Why not? How will this knowledge affect the gods that they worship?

10. Sinuhe speaks of a remedy from the Hittites that cures the body of heat. What is this remedy called today? How do you think the Hittites created this drug?

(see the answer keys)

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