d Why can't O'Neil turn the bomb off?e How does Ra die?Who goes through the StarGate and back to Earth at the end ofthe story?12 Do you think Daniel is right to stay behind at the end of the story? Doyou think he and Sha'uri will have a happy life? Why/why not?Writing13 Write a short description of three of these people:Daniel / O'Neil / Ra / Sha'uri / Anubis14 After Ra dies, Daniel decides to stay with Sha'uri in her world. Write adescription of his first week, after the others have gone back to Earth.15 It is a year later. You are Daniel and you are still living in Sha'uri'sworld. Write a message to Catherine Langford on Earth. Write aboutyour life and how you feel.16 Have you seen the film of this book? If you have, which did you likebetter - the film or the book? Why? If you haven't seen StarGate,have you seen a science fiction film like it? Write about the film.AllSWl'rs for the- Ac-uvttu-x ill lhis book an- available from vour Itll';ll ollll'l' Of altcruat.vclv write to:PCllgllill ]{l'
Penguin Readers FactsheetsTeacher’s notesStarGatefrom the screenplay and novelizationby Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich,adapted by Sheila BlackS U M M A R YlevelE123456PRE-INTERMEDIATEYoung archaeologist Daniel Jackson has a theoryabout the Great Pyramid, the huge, four-and-ahalf-thousand-year-oldmonument at Giza. He believesthat it was not the ancient Egyptians who built it, butpeople from outer space. Almost every other seriousscientist in the world thinks he’s mad - but not all. Formany years, Catherine Langford has known about anEgyptian stone with strange words on it that talk about thestars. She asks for Daniel’s help in working out themeaning of the stone - but he soon realizes that Catherinehas found far more than just a stone. Working with theUnited States Army, she has discovered the StarGate, amachine ten thousand years old that can transport humanbeings across space. But the Army want to know wherethe StarGate leads to, and soon Daniel is travelling withthem to a place many light years away - a place which isruled by the ancient Egyptian god of the sun, Ra, withhumans as his slaves.ABOUT THE FILM ‘STARGATE’Directed by Roland Emmerich, ‘StarGate’ was a jointUnited States/French production, and was one of themost popular films in America in the year of its release,1994. It starred Kurt Russell as US Army colonel JackO’Neil, James Spader as Dr Daniel Jackson and JayeDavidson as Ra. Much of it was filmed in the terrible heatof the Arizona desert, which provided the landscape ofthe planet on which most of the action takes place. Theactor Jaye Davidson had given up working in films beforehe was offered the part of Ra, but became interested inthe film when he learned that he would actually bespeaking his lines in ancient Egyptian.BACKGROUND AND THEMESThe ancient Egyptian civilization was one of the first in theworld, and has fascinated people from its own time downto our time. The beginnings of the Egyptian people werethe tribes that lived along the Nile and who began farmingthe river’s banks from about 5000 BC. In about 3200 BC,they created a kingdom which stretched from the mouthof the Nile river to Abu Simbel, nearly 1000 kilometres tothe south. By that time they were already writing historiesand describing their lives on papyrus - an early kind ofpaper. They were good at astronomy and mathematicsand highly skilled in medicine. They were also highlyorganized.For most of Egypt’s history, the authority of the King, orPharaoh, was unquestioned. He was a god - the son of Ra- upon whom the whole life of Egypt depended, and it wasthought that when he died he would achieve everlastinglife. Ra, the sun god, was the creator of the world, andaccording to one tradition was himself the first Pharaoh.But many other gods were important to the Egyptians:almost as important as Ra was Horus, the falcon-headedsky god. They also worshipped Osiris, the god of death;Isis his sister; and Anubis, the dog - or jackal-headed god,who led the dead before Osiris to be judged.Incredibly, as Dr Daniel Jackson points out in StarGate,the Egyptian way of life continued almost unchanged for3000 years. For much of this time the Egyptians wereregarded with great admiration in the Mediterranean andMiddle Eastern world. They were thought to be greatmagicians, and certainly they placed great importance onwhat nowadays we might call ‘magic’. For example, theybelieved that the written word - or the written symbol -had great power. In the tombs of the Pharaohs and otherimportant people they wrote numbers of ‘spells’ whichwere intended to give power to the dead to live afterdeath.However, what most impressed the ancient world, asthey still impress us today, were the country’s buildings.Egyptians were master builders, and the most spectacularof all their achievements were the pyramids. These werethe tombs of the pharaohs. The first was built around2500 BC. They were not built by slaves, as has often beenassumed, but by the Pharaoh’s people themselves whowere made to work on them every autumn, when the Nilehad flooded their fields. The biggest pyramids are at Giza,just outside Cairo, and the largest of all the pyramids isthat of the Pharaoh Khufu, or Cheops - built in about 2550BC. It is also called the Great Pyramid. It is 137 metreshigh, and made of between five and six million tonnes ofstone. The accuracy with which it was built is still today aSTARGATE© Pearson Education 2000
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- Page 9 and 10: 'There's )'ol/r "StarGate",' Cather
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