DAY 3: READING - SENTENCE COMPLETION

Passage 1
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE LONDON UNDERGROUND RAILWAY

In the first half of the 1800s, London’s population grew at an astonishing rate, and the
central area became increasingly congested. In addition, the expansion of the overground
railway network resulted in more and more passengers arriving in the capital. However, in
1846, a Royal Commission decided that the railways should not be allowed to enter the
City, the capital’s historic and business centre. The result was that the overground railway
stations formed a ring around the City. The area within consisted of poorly built,
overcrowded slums and the streets were full of horse-drawn traffic. Crossing the City
became a nightmare. It could take an hour and a half to travel 8 km by horse-drawn carriage
or bus. Numerous schemes were proposed to resolve these problems, but few succeeded.
Amongst the most vocal advocates for a solution to London’s traffic problems was Charles
Pearson, who worked as a solicitor for the City of London. He saw both social and
economic advantages in building an underground railway that would link the overground
railway stations together and clear London slums at the same time. His idea was to relocate
the poor workers who lived in the inner-city slums to newly constructed suburbs, and to
provide cheap rail travel for them to get to work. Pearson’s ideas gained support amongst
some businessmen and in 1851 he submitted a plan to Parliament. It was rejected, but
coincided with a proposal from another group for an underground connecting line, which
Parliament passed.
The two groups merged and established the Metropolitan Railway Company in August
1854. The company’s plan was to construct an underground railway line from the Great
Western Railway’s (GWR) station at Paddington to the edge of the City at Farringdon
Street - a distance of almost 5 km. The organisation had difficulty in raising the funding
for such a radical and expensive scheme, not least because of the critical articles printed by
the press. Objectors argued that the tunnels would collapse under the weight of traffic
overhead, buildings would be shaken and passengers would be poisoned by the emissions
from the train engines. However, Pearson and his partners persisted.
The GWR, aware that the new line would finally enable them to run trains into the heart of
the City, invested almost £250,000 in the scheme. Eventually, over a five-year period, £1m
was raised. The chosen route ran beneath existing main roads to minimise the expense of
demolishing buildings. Originally scheduled to be completed in 21 months, the
construction of the underground line took three years. It was built just below street level
using a technique known as ‘cut and cover’. A trench about ten metres wide and six metres
deep was dug, and the sides temporarily held up with timber beams. Brick walls were then

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constructed, and finally a brick arch was added to create a tunnel. A two-metre-deep layer
of soil was laid on top of the tunnel and the road above rebuilt.
The Metropolitan line, which opened on 10 January 1863, was the world’s first
underground railway. On its first day, almost 40,000 passengers were carried between
Paddington and Farringdon, the journey taking about 18 minutes. By the end of the
Metropolitan’s first year of operation, 9.5 million journeys had been made.
Even as the Metropolitan began operation, the first extensions to the line were being
authorised; these were built over the next five years, reaching Moorgate in the east of
London and Hammersmith in the west. The original plan was to pull the trains with steam
locomotives, using firebricks in the boilers to provide steam, but these engines were never
introduced. Instead, the line used specially designed locomotives that were fitted with
water tanks in which steam could be condensed. However, smoke and fumes remained a
problem, even though ventilation shafts were added to the tunnels.
Despite the extension of the underground railway, by the 1880s, congestion on London’s
streets had become worse. The problem was partly that the existing underground lines
formed a circuit around the centre of London and extended to the suburbs, but did not
cross the capital’s centre. The ‘cut and cover’ method of construction was not an option in
this part of the capital. The only alternative was to tunnel deep underground.
Although the technology to create these tunnels existed, steam locomotives could not be
used in such a confined space. It wasn’t until the development of a reliable electric motor,
and a means of transferring power from the generator to a moving train, that the world’s
first deep-level electric railway, the City & South London, became possible. The line
opened in 1890, and ran from the City to Stockwell, south of the River Thames. The trains
were made up of three carriages and driven by electric engines. The carriages were narrow
and had tiny windows just below the roof because it was thought that passengers would not
want to look out at the tunnel walls. The line was not without its problems, mainly caused
by an unreliable power supply. Although the City & South London Railway was a great
technical achievement, it did not make a profit. Then, in 1900, the Central London Railway,
known as the ‘Tuppenny Tube’, began operation using new electric locomotives. It was
very popular and soon afterwards new railways and extensions were added to the growing
tube network. By 1907, the heart of today’s Underground system was in place.

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Question 1-6
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.

The London underground railway

The problem
• The 1..........................................of London increased rapidly between 1800 and 1850
• The streets were full of horse-drawn vehicles
The proposed solution
• Charles Pearson, a solicitor, suggested building an underground railway
• Building the railway would make it possible to move people to better housing in the
2..........................................
• A number of 3..........................................agreed with Pearson’s idea
• The company initially had problems getting the 4..........................................needed for
the project
• Negative articles about the project appeared in the 5..........................................
The construction
• The chosen route did not require many buildings to be pulled down
• The ‘cut and cover’ method was used to construct the tunnels
• With the completion of the brick arch, the tunnel was covered with
6..........................................

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Passage 2
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THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

In late 1946 or early 1947, three Bedouin teenagers were tending their goats and sheep near
the ancient settlement of Qumran, located on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea in what
is now known as the West Bank. One of these young shepherds tossed a rock into an
opening on the side of a cliff and was surprised to hear a shattering sound. He and his
companions later entered the cave and stumbled across a collection of large clay jars, seven
of which contained scrolls with writing on them. The teenagers took the seven scrolls to a
nearby town where they were sold for a small sum to a local antiquities dealer. Word of
the find spread, and Bedouins and archaeologists eventually unearthed tens of thousands
of additional scroll fragments from 10 nearby caves; together they make up between 800
and 900 manuscripts. It soon became clear that this was one of the greatest archaeological
discoveries ever made.

The origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were written around 2,000 years ago between
150 BCE and 70 CE, is still the subject of scholarly debate even today. According to the
prevailing theory, they are the work of a population that inhabited the area until Roman
troops destroyed the settlement around 70 CE. The area was known as Judea at that time,
and the people are thought to have belonged to a group called the Essenes, a devout Jewish
sect.

The majority of the texts on the Dead Sea Scrolls are in Hebrew, with some fragments
written in an ancient version of its alphabet thought to have fallen out of use in the fifth
century BCE. But there are other languages as well. Some scrolls are in Aramaic, the
language spoken by many inhabitants of the region from the sixth century BCE to the siege
of Jerusalem in 70 CE. In addition, several texts feature translations of the Hebrew Bible
into Greek.

The Dead Sea Scrolls include fragments from every book of the Old Testament of the Bible
except for the Book of Esther. The only entire book of the Hebrew Bible preserved among
the manuscripts from Qumran is Isaiah; this copy, dated to the first century BCE, is
considered the earliest biblical manuscript still in existence. Along with biblical texts, the
scrolls include documents about sectarian regulations and religious writings that do not
appear in the Old Testament.

The writing on the Dead Sea Scrolls is mostly in black or occasionally red ink, and the
scrolls themselves are nearly all made of either parchment (animal skin) or an early form
of paper called ‘papyrus’. The only exception is the scroll numbered 3Q15, which was
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created out of a combination of copper and tin. Known as the Copper Scroll, this curious
document features letters chiselled onto metal - perhaps, as some have theorized, to better
withstand the passage of time. One of the most intriguing manuscripts from Qumran, this
is a sort of ancient treasure map that lists dozens of gold and silver caches. Using an
unconventional vocabulary and odd spelling, it describes 64 underground hiding places
that supposedly contain riches buried for safekeeping. None of these hoards have been
recovered, possibly because the Romans pillaged Judea during the first century CE.
According to various hypotheses, the treasure belonged to local people, or was rescued
from the Second Temple before its destruction or never existed to begin with.

Some of the Dead Sea Scrolls have been on interesting journeys. In 1948, a Syrian
Orthodox archbishop known as Mar Samuel acquired four of the original seven scrolls
from a Jerusalem shoemaker and part-time antiquity dealer, paying less than $100 for them.
He then travelled to the United States and unsuccessfully offered them to a number of
universities, including Yale. Finally, in 1954, he placed an advertisement in the business
newspaper The Wall Street Journal - under the category ‘Miscellaneous Items for Sale’ -
that read: ‘Biblical Manuscripts dating back to at least 200 B.C. are for sale. This would be
an ideal gift to an educational or religious institution by an individual or group.’
Fortunately, Israeli archaeologist and statesman Yigael Yadin negotiated their purchase
and brought the scrolls back to Jerusalem, where they remain to this day.

In 2017, researchers from the University of Haifa restored and deciphered one of the last
untranslated scrolls. The university’s Eshbal Ratson and Jonathan Ben-Dov spent one year
reassembling the 60 fragments that make up the scroll. Deciphered from a band of coded
text on parchment, the find provides insight into the community of people who wrote it and
the 364-day calendar they would have used. The scroll names celebrations that indicate
shifts in seasons and details two yearly religious events known from another Dead Sea
Scroll. Only one more known scroll remains untranslated.

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Question 1-5
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

The Dead Sea Scrolls

Discovery
Qumran, 1946/7
• three Bedouin shepherds in their teens were near an opening on side of cliff
• heard a noise of breaking when one teenager threw a 1..........................................
• teenagers went into the 2..........................................and found a number of containers
made of 3..........................................

The scrolls
• date from between 150 BCE and 70 CE
• thought to have been written by a group of people known as the
4..........................................
• written mainly in the 5..........................................language
• most are on religious topics, written using ink on parchment or papyrus

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