Read Online Return of the Homework Machine by Dan Gutman - Free Book Online

GPS!
    And a super GPS was just the thing I needed, because it could lead me right to the location of the secret caverns. Right to the treasure of the Grand Canyon.

Chapter 7
    March
    MR. MURPHY. SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER
    One of the things we spend a lot of time on in sixth grade is ancient Egypt. They were a fascinating people, and the kids were fascinated by them. I got some videos from the library to show them what life was like in the time of the pharaohs.
    BRENTON DAMAGATCHI. GRADE 6
    What interested me the most were the pyramids. Six million tons of stone. Some of the blocks weigh nine tons. Think about it. The wheel wasn’t invented yet. The only tools the Egyptians had to move and carry all that stone were wood and rope. So how did they build the pyramids? I’ll tell you how. They didn’t. Aliens had to havebuilt them. Did you know that the Great Pyramid is lined up exactly with the magnetic north pole of the Earth? That can’t be coincidence. The compass hadn’t been invented yet either.
    If you go on the Internet, there’s a lot of evidence that people couldn’t have built the pyramids. It had to be aliens.
    SAM DAWKINS. GRADE 6
    The coolest thing about the Egyptians was the way they preserved their dead guys. They would pull their organs out and make them into mummies. They would break their nose, and then bust the brain into little pieces so they could pull it out through where the nose used to be. I’m not making this stuff up. And then, get this, they would fill the skull with sawdust! Sounds like some people I know, and they’re still alive.
    Mr. Murphy told us he went to a museum in Egypt once and they had a special mummy room. You had to pay a separate admission just to see the mummies. So he paid the admission and went in. And you know how when you see mummies in cartoons they’re all wrappedup in tape and stuff? Well, these mummies were unwrapped. Mr. Murphy said it was like looking at meat in a supermarket. Gross! But mummies are cool. The Egyptians mummified cats and crocodiles too. They really loved their mummies.
    KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6
    The ancient Egyptians worshipped Ra the sun god, Horus the sky god, and Osiris the god of the dead. They believed that every day, Ra sailed across the sky in a boat. And then at night he would disappear into the underworld of the west. There was another Nile River there, they believed. Osiris pulled the boat along this river until morning, when the sun rose again. It was actually very beautiful.
    JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6
    I liked that the ancient Egyptians were a peaceful people. They created beautiful art, architecture, sculpture, and writing. Mr. Murphy told us that for years and years, nobody was able to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics. Then they found this thing called the RosettaStone, which was a tablet that had a passage written in three different languages. After many years they finally translated them, and they were able to figure out what the hieroglyphics meant.
    MR. MURPHY. SIXTH-GRADE TEACHER
    Everything about ancient Egypt interested the kids. But what really made their eyes bug out was when we got to King Tutankhamen. I guess it was because Tut was nine years old when he became pharaoh, and he was only nineteen when he died. Kids can relate to that.
    JUDY DOUGLAS. GRADE 6
    Mr. Murphy told us that a British archeologist named Howard Carter searched for the tomb of King Tut for fifteen years until he finally found it in the Valley of the Kings in 1922. He reached a sealed doorway to a burial chamber. When he opened it and peered inside with a candle, there was King Tut’s tomb, completely intact. It was made of solid gold, and it was surrounded by lots of other golden things, jewels, treasures, and all the boy king’s possessions.
    KELSEY DONNELLY. GRADE 6
    King Tut’s tomb had a curse, you know. They all did. There were warnings around the body: “Death shall come on swift wings to him that touches the tomb