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  3. Whose Grave is This Anyway? There are many legends about the world famous Egyptian Pharaohs’ tombs, which have lain silent for t

Whose Grave is This Anyway? There are many legends about the world famous Egyptian Pharaohs’ tombs, which have lain silent for t

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问题                     Whose Grave is This Anyway?
There are many legends about the world famous Egyptian Pharaohs’ tombs, which have lain silent for thousands of years along the Nero River. In reality though, this silence has constantly been disturbed by a great variety of people. While considering their different motivations in doing so, we must examine whether disturbing the ancient tombs is justifiable or worthy of condemnation.
     (A)hen Howard Carter and his party opened the tomb of the Egyptian king Tutankhamen in 1922, there was rejoicing around the world.(B)he tomb was largely intact and not seriously pillaged by ancient grave robbers, so it still contained the wonderful artifacts that had been buried with the young king more than three millennia earlier.(C)Over the next several years Carter and his team systematically photographed and catalogued the objects from the tomb, then transported them to the Cairo Museum.(D)
    There is a certain irony in this story that raises complex ethical questions. Why are Carter and his party not called grave robbers? Why are their actions in stripping the tomb acceptable—even praiseworthy—when similar behavior by common thieves would be deplored? No matter who opens a tomb and takes away its contents, that person is violating the intentions of those who sealed the tomb originally. No matter what the motivation, a human body that was meant to rest in peace for all time has been disturbed. Should this not make us feel uncomfortable?
    From the beginning, some were uneasy about the propriety of unearthing Tutankhamen’s remains. When Lord Carnarvon, Carter’s sponsor, died suddenly from a mosquito bite, and several others connected with the project experienced tragedies, rumors arose about the "curse of King Tut". But Carter himself died peacefully many years later, and the talk subsided.
    Perhaps it is the passage of time that transforms grave robbing into archaeology. Carter would no doubt have been outraged if, say, his grandmother’s coffin had been dug up to strip the body of its jewelry. But after three thousand years Tutankhamen has no living relatives to protest his disturbance.
    Perhaps it is a question of the words we use to describe such ancient finds. We speak of Tutankhamen’s "mummy", and mummy is a clean, historical-sounding word. Parents bring their children to museums to see the mummies and mummy cases. We can almost forget that a mummy is the embalmed body of a dead human being, pulled out of its coffin so that we can marvel at the coffin and sometimes the body itself.
    Or, perhaps the difference between grave robbing and archaeology lies in the motives of the perpetrators. Common thieves are motivated by greed, by their quest for money to be made by selling stolen objects. Carter and his team did not sell the treasures from Tutankhamen’s tomb but stored them safely in the Cairo Museum, where art lovers from around the world can see them. They were, in effect, making a glorious gift to the people of our century and centuries to come(while at the same time, one must point out, acquiring significant glory for themselves).
    The basic issue is a clash of cultural values. To the Egyptians, it was normal and correct to bury their finest artworks with the exalted dead. To us, the idea of all that beauty being locked away in the dark forever seems an appalling waste. We want to bring it into the light, to have it as part of our precious artistic heritage. Almost no one, having seen these magnificent treasures, would seriously propose they be put back in the tomb and sealed up.
    In the end, inevitably, our cultural values will prevail simply because we are still here and the ancient Egyptians are not. After three thousand years, Tutankhamen’s grave really isn’t his anymore. Whether right or wrong, it belongs to us.
What can be inferred about the irony mentioned in Paragraph 3?
选项 A、Scientists and thieves both opened the coffins.
B、Only clever people could be this type of thief.
C、Nobody wants to be a thief but is forced to sometimes.
D、This kind of thief is respected by some people.
答案A
解析 本题是推论题，主要考查考生能否根据文章内未明确阐明的信息作出推论的能力。题目问：第三段提到的故事具有讽刺意味，对此我们可以作出什么推论?在该段中作者提出了两个问题，即为什么Carter和他的队友没有被叫做盗墓者?为什么他们的盗墓行为能为人们所接受——甚至受到赞扬，而一般的盗墓者却要受到谴责?从这两个问题可知，这种讽刺意味在于，Carter和他的队友同一般的盗墓贼一样都打开了墓地，但是他们却没有被叫做贼，所以选A项。
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