Chapter 08
第八章
The Sumerians
苏美尔人
The Sumerian Nall Writers, Whose Clay Tablets Tell us the story of Assyria and Babylonia The Great Semitic Melting Pot
苏美尔人用刻在泥版上的楔形文字给我们讲述了闪米特人的大熔炉--亚述和巴比伦王国的故事
The fifteenth century was an age of great discoveries.
15世纪是一个地理大发现的世纪。
Columbus tried to find a way to the island of Kathay and stumbled upon a new and unsuspected continent.
哥伦布想要找到一条通往香料群岛的水路，却意料之外地来到了美洲新大陆。
An Austrian bishop equipped an expedition which was to travel eastward and find the home of the Grand Duke of Muscovy, a voyage which led to complete failure,
一位奥地利主教出资装备了一支探险队，向东方去探寻莫斯科大公的家园，却无功而返。
for Moscow was not visited by western men until a generation later.
直到一代人之后，西方人才首次造访了莫斯科。
Meanwhile a certain Venetian by the name of Barbero had explored the ruins of western Asia and had brought back reports of a most curious language
与此同时，一个名为巴贝罗的威尼斯人考察了西亚的古迹，并带回有关一种神秘文字的报告。
which he had found carved in the rocks of the temples of Shiraz and engraved upon endless pieces of baked clay.
这种神秘的文字有的刻在伊朗谢拉兹地区许多庙宇的石壁上，更多的是刻在无数烘干的泥版上。
But Europe was busy with many other things
不过，此时的欧洲正忙于许多别的事情。
and it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that the first "cuneiform inscriptions" (socalled because the letters were wedge-shaped and wedge is called "Cuneus"in Latin) were brought to Europe by a Danish surveyor, named Niebuhr.
直到18世纪末，第一批"楔形文字"泥版（所以如此称呼，是因为该文字的字母呈楔状）才由一个叫尼布尔的丹麦勘测员带回欧洲。
Then it took thirty years before a patient German school-master by the name of Grotefend had deciphered the first four letters, the D, the A, the R and the SH, the name of the Persian King Darius.
极富耐心的德国教师格罗特芬德花了30年时间，破译了前面的四个字母，分别是d，a，r及sh，合起来正是波斯国王大流士的名字。