Q2 - Museum curator: Our ancient Egyptian collection

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Necessary Assumption (assumption required)

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: This hippo was a religious object.
Evidence: The hippo was found in a tomb, with its legs broken off. Breaking the legs off an animal objects was supposed to help someone in the next world, in ancient Egyptian culture.

Answer Anticipation:
Just because the hippo conforms to the possible story the author is telling, we can't be certain the author's story DEFINITELY is right. Any time an LSAT author is offering an explanation for something found, something that happened, some statistic, we need to consider alternative explanations. This author needs to assume that there are no other ways to explain this entombed, legless hippo and she needs to assume that there aren't any details that would bring her "religious object" hypothesis crashing down.

Correct Answer:
D

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Out of scope: Whether the tomb belonged to a child or an adult, the author could still make her argument.

(B) Extreme: "never"? The author isn't bothered if at least one time an earthenware figure was a toy.

(C) Out of scope: Whether the tomb was reentered is not enough information to attack this author's argument. We'd have to spin a very complicated tale in which someone enters the tomb and breaks the legs off a toy elephant simply to confuse future museum curators.

(D) YES! If we negate this, it provides an alternative explanation for the entombed, legless hippo: it had its legs when it was buried (thus, it did not have its legs broken in order to provide afterlife assistance) and some natural occurrence later broke the legs.

(E) Out of scope: upside down vs. right side up has no bearing on "religious object or not?"

Takeaway/Pattern: On Necessary Assumption we want to always be wary of extreme language (like "never") and be receptive to ruling out language (like "the legs were NOT broken by some natural cause").

#officialexplanation