Picture a vast plain, crossed by these two rivers.

你想象一个极其辽阔的平原，这两条河流经这个平原。

A land of heat and swamp and sudden floods.

这个平原上的土地又热又湿，有时洪水突如其来。

Here and there tall hills rise out of the plain.

在这个平原上到处都可以看到高大的山丘。

But if you dig into them you find that they aren't hills at all.

如果你挖掘它们，你会发现它们不是真正的山丘。

First you come across a lot of bricks and rubble, and when you dig deeper you meet stout, high walls.

首先你会找到一堆砖头和瓦砾，当你越挖越深时，你会看到高大、坚固的城墙。

For these hills are really ruined towns and great cities laid out with long, straight streets, tall houses, palaces and temples.

因为这些山丘其实是衰败的城市遗迹，有又长又笔直的街道，有高大的房屋、宫殿和庙宇。

But unlike Egypt's stone temples and pyramids, they were built with sun-baked bricks which cracked and crumbled over time, and eventually collapsed into great mounds of rubble.

它们不像埃及的庙宇和金字塔是用石头建成的，而是用砖瓦建成，它们在阳光照射下渐渐碎裂并最终崩坍成庞大的瓦砾堆。

One such mound, standing in the desert, is all that remains of Babylon,

今天在一个荒漠地区的一个这样的瓦砾堆，就是历史上的巴比伦，

once the greatest city on earth, a city swarming with people who came there from every part of the world to trade their wares.

它曾是世界上最大的城市，来自世界各地的大批人群聚集在这里，他们把他们的商品送到这里并进行交换。

Upstream, at the foot of the mountains, sits another. This was Nineveh, the second greatest city in the land.

逆流而上，如今在山边的一个这样的瓦砾堆是这个国家的第二大城市：尼尼微。

Babylon was the capital of the Babylonians–that's easy enough to remember–Nineveh was that of the Assyrians.

巴比伦是巴比伦人的首都——这容易记住——而尼尼微曾是亚述人的首都。