罗塞塔石碑――破解埃及象形文字之谜的秘匙.docVIP

罗塞塔石碑――破解埃及象形文字之谜的秘匙 　　关于罗塞塔石碑 　　石碑由上至下共刻有同一段诏书的三种语言版本，最上面是古埃及象形文（又称圣书体，代表献给神明的文字），中间是埃及草书（又称为世俗体，是当时埃及平民使用的文字），最下面的是古希腊文（代表统治者的语言，这是因为当时的埃及已臣服于希腊的亚历山大帝国之下，来自希腊的统治者要求统治领地内所有的此类文书都要添加希腊文的译版）。罗塞塔石碑独特的三语对照写法成为解码的关键，因为古希腊文是近代人类可以阅读的文字，利用这关键来比对分析碑上其他两种语言的内容，就可以了解这些失传语言的文字与文法结构。 　　On July 15th， 1799， a French soldier noticed a strange stone in the wall of an old fort[堡垒] near the town of Rashid， Egypt. The town， also called Rosetta， is in the delta[三角洲] of the Nile River and was part of the area occupied by the French Army at that time. France， under Napoleon Bonaparte注， had invaded[侵略] Egypt in 1799 as a means of establishing[建立] a French presence[存在] in the Middle East. 　　The stone was dark granite[花岗岩]， smoothly finished. It was 3 feet 9 inches long and 2 feet 4.5 inches wide， and what made it noticeable[值得注意的] was that it had some sort of inscription[碑铭] carved onto it. The soldier’s commanding officer[指挥官] called in some archaeologists[考古学家]， who had accompanied[陪伴] the French Army to Egypt， to show them the find. They soon realized that the stone’s inscription was in three different languages： ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs[象形文字]， a script[书写体] called Demotic[古埃及通俗文字] （an alphabet writing also used by the Egyptians） and ancient Greek. 　　Greek， even in its ancient form， was well known to Europeans， but the secret to reading hieroglyphs and Demotic had died out nearly two thousand years before. Europeans were awed[充满敬畏的] by the artifacts[史前古器物]， temples and monuments[纪念碑] of Egypt， but they had no way to read or understand the inscriptions that would tell them who had built these marvels[奇妙之物] and what they meant. This stone， they saw， was the means[方法] to unlock the written record of the ancient civilization. 　　The British invaded Egypt and defeated[击败] the French in 1801， and took possession[占有] of the Rosetta Stone along with many other archaeological treasures unearthed by the French. Although they took the stone back to London， where it was given to the B