Reading passage-1 You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13

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READING PASSAGE-1 
You should spend about 20 minutes on 
Questions 1-13,
 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.
Why do people collect things?
People from almost every culture love collecting things. They might collect 
stamps, books, cards, priceless paintings or worthless ticket stubs to old 
sports games. Their collection might hang on the walls of a mansion or be 
stored in a box under the bed. So what is it that drives people to collect? 
Psychologist Dr Maria Richter argues that urge to collect is a basic human 
characteristic. According to her, in the very first years of life we form 
emotional connections with lifeless objects such as soft toys. And these 
positive relationships are the starting point for our fascination with 
collecting objects. In fact, the desire to collect may go back further still. 
Scientists suggest that for some ancient humans living hundreds of 
thousands of years ago, collecting may have had a serious purpose. Only by 
collecting sufficient food supplies to last though freezing winters or dry 
summers could our ancestors stay alive until the weather improved. 
It turns out that even collecting for pleasure has a very long history. In 1925, 
the archaeologist Leonard Woolley was working at a site in the historic 
Babylonian city of Ur. Woolley had travelled to the region intending only to 
excavate the site of a palace. Instead, to his astonishment, he dug up 
artefacts, which appeared to belong to a 2,500- year-old museum. Among the 
objects was part of a statue and a piece of a local building. And 
accompanying some of the artefacts were descriptions like modern-day 
labels. These texts appeared in three languages and were carved into pieces 
of clay. It seems likely that this early private collection of objects was created 
by Princess Ennigaldi, the daughter of King Nabonidus. However, very little 
else is known about Princess Ennigaldi or what her motivations were for 
setting up her collection.
This may have been one of the first large private collections, but it was not 
the last. Indeed, the fashion for establishing collections really got started in 
Europe around 2,000 years later with so-called ‘Cabinets of Curiosities’. 
These were collections, usually belonging to wealthy families that were 
displayed in cabinets or small rooms. Cabinets of Curiosities typically 
included fine paintings and drawings, but equal importance was given to 
exhibits from the natural world such as animal specimens, shells and plants.
Some significant private collections of this sort date from the fifteenth 
century. One of the first belonged to the Medici family. The Medicis became a 
powerful political family in Italy and later a royal house, but banking was 
originally the source of all their wealth. The family started by collecting coins 
and valuable gems, then artworks and antiques from around Europe. In 1570 
a secret ‘studio’ was built inside the Palazzo Medici to house their growing 
collection. This exhibition room had solid walls without windows to keep the 
valuable collection safe.
In the seventeenth century, another fabulous collection was created by a 
Danish physician name Ole Worm. His collection room contained numerous 
skeletons and specimens, as well as ancient texts and a laboratory. One of 
Ole Worm’s motivations was to point out when other researchers had made 
mistakes, such as the false claim that birds of paradise had no feet. He also 
owned a great auk, species of bird that has now become extinct, and the 
illustration he produced of it has been of value to later scientists.
The passion for collecting was just as strong in the nineteenth century. Lady 
Charlotte Guest spoke at least six languages and became well-known for 
translating English books into Welsh. She also travelled widely throughout 
Europe acquiring old and rare pottery, which she added to her collection at 
home in southern England. When Lady Charlotte died in 1895 this collection 
was given to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. At around the same 
time in the north of England, a wealthy goldsmith named Joseph Mayer was 
building up an enormous collection of artefacts, particularly those dug up 
from sites in his local area. His legacy, the Mayer Trust, continues to fund 
public lectures in accordance with his wishes.
In the twentieth century, the writer Beatrix Potter had a magnificent 
collection of books, insects, plants and other botanical specimens. Most of 
these were donated to London’s Natural History Museum, but Beatrix held 
on to her cabinets of fossils, which she was particularly proud of. In the 
United Stats, President Franklin D. Roosevelt began his stamp collection as a 
child and continued to add to it all his life. The stress associated with being 
president was easier to cope with, Roosevelt said, by taking time out to focus 
on his collection. By the end of his life this had expanded to include model 
ships, coins and artworks.
Most of us will never own collections so large or valuable as these. However, 
the examples given here suggest that collecting is a passion that has been 
shared by countless people over many centuries.