Read the following passage and then choose the best answer for each question

Archaeological discoveries have led some scholars to believe that the first Mesopotamian inventors of writing may have been a people the later Babylonians called Subarians. According to tradition, they came from the north and moved into Uruk in the south. By about 3100B.C, They were apparently subjugated in southern Mesopotamia by the Sumerians, whose name became synonymous with the region immediately north of the
Persian Gulf, in the fertile lower valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates. Here the Sumerians were already well established by the year 3000B.C. They had invented bronze, an alloy that could be cast in molds, out of which they made tools and weapons. They lived in cities, and they had begun to acquire and use capital. Perhaps most important, the Sumerians adapted writing (probably from the Subarians) into a flexible tool of
communication.

Archacologists have known about the Sumerians for over 150 years. Archacologists working at Nineveh in northern Mesopotamia in the mid-nineteenth century found many inscribed clay tablets. Some they could decipher because the language was a Semitic one (Akkadian), on which scholars had already been working for a generation. But other tablets were inscribed in another language that was not Semitic and previously
unknown. Because these inscriptions mad reference to the king of Sumer and Akkad, a scholar suggested that the mew language be called Sumerian. But it was not until the 1890’s that archaeologists excavating in city-states well to the south o fNieveh found many thousands of tablets inscribed in Sumerian only. Because the Akkadians thought of Sumerian as a classical language (as ancient Greek and Latin are considered today),
they taught it to educated persons and they inscribed vocabulary, translation exercised, and other study aids on tablets. Working from known Akkadian to previously unknown Sumerian, scholars since the 1890’s have learned how to read the Sumerian language moderately well. Vast quantities of tablets in Sumerian have been unearthed during the intervening years from numerous sites.

1. According to the passage, the inventors of written language in Mesopotamia were probably the

2. The word “subjugated” in line 3 is closest in meaning to

3. The phrase “synonymous with” in line 4 is closest in meaning to

4. According to the passage, by the year 3000 B.C. the Sumerians had already done all of the
following EXCEPT:

5. The word “some” in line 11 refers to

6. Which of the following can be inferred from the passage concerning the Sumerians?

7. According to the passage, when did archaeologists begin to be able to understand tablets inscribed in Sumerian?

8. According to the passage, in what way did the Sumerian language resemble ancient Greek
and Latin?

9. The word “excavating” in line 16 is closest in meaning to

10. According to the passage, how did archaeologists learn to read the Sumerian language?