But this particular slab of black basalt was different from anything that had ever been discovered.
与此前发现的别的物件不同的是，这块特别的黑玄武岩石板
It carried three inscriptions. One of these was in Greek. The Greek language was known.
上面刻有三种文字的碑文，其中之一是人们知道的希腊文。
"All that is necessary," so he reasoned, "is to compare the Greek text with the Egyptian figures, and they will at once tell their secrets."
“只要把希腊文的意思和埃及图像加以比较，””他推论道，“马上就能揭开这些埃及小图像的秘密。”
The plan sounded simple enough but it took more than twenty years to solve the riddle.
这办祛听起来简单，可要完全揭开这个谜底，是20年过后的事情。
In the year 1802 a French professor by the name of Champollion began to compare the Greek and the Egyptian texts of the famous Rosetta stone.
1802年，一位叫商博良的法国教授开始对著名的罗塞塔石碑上的希腊和埃及文字进行比较。
In the year 1823 he announced that he had discovered the meaning of fourteen little figures.
到 1823年，他宣布自己破译了石碑上14个小图像的含义。
A short time later he died from overwork, but the main principles of Egyptian writing had become known.
不久，商搏良因为劳累过度而死，可埃及文字的主要法则此时已大白于天下了。
Today the story of the valley of the Nile is better known to us than the story of the Mississippi River.
今天，我们了解的尼罗河流域的历史要比密西西比河的清楚得多，
We possess a written record which covers four thousand years of chronicled history.
因为我们拥有了整整4000年的文字记录。
As the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics (the word means "sacred writing") have played such a very great role in history,
古埃及的象形文字（这个字眼的原义为“神圣的书写”）在历史上扮演了一个异常重要的角色，
a few of them in modified form have even found their way into our own alphabet,
其中几个字历经变动还融入了我们现代的字母中。
you ought to know something about the ingenious system which was used fifty centuries ago to preserve the spoken word for the benefit of the coming generations.
所以，你应该稍微了解一下这个5000年前使用的极富天才的文字体系，
Of course, you know what a sign language is.
要知道，是它首次为后人保留了前人说过的口语。
Every Indian story of our western plains has a chapter devoted to strange messages written in the form of little pictures
当然，你是知道图像语言的。我们西方流传的每一个印地安故事都有专门的一章，用以介绍印地安人使用的奇怪小图案。
which tell how many buffaloes were killed and how many hunters there were in a certain party.
它们传递着诸如有多少野牛被杀或者有多少猎手参加某一次围猎之类的信息。
As a rule it is not difficult to understand the meaning of such messages.
一般来说，理解这些信息是不难的。
Ancient Egyptian, however, was not a sign language.
不过，古埃及文字可不是简单的图像语言。
The clever people of the Nile had passed beyond that stage long before.
尼罗河畔的人民早就聪明地跨越了这一原始的阶段。
Their pictures meant a great deal more than the object which they represented, as I shall try to explain to you now.
他们的小图像代表着比图案本身更多的意思。现在，我将试着给你们解释一下。