8　苏美尔人

苏美尔人的楔形文字作者，在泥板上给我们讲述了亚述和巴比伦——闪族部落大熔炉的故事

15世纪是一个有着重大发现的时代。哥伦布想找到一条通往震旦岛的路，却意外发现了一块无人知道的新大陆。一位奥地利主教派出一支探险队，向东进发，寻找莫斯科大公的家乡。但此次旅行彻底失败了，因为直到他们下一代，才有西方人拜访莫斯科。与此同时，一位名叫巴尔比罗的威尼斯人考察了西亚的废墟，并带回一些令人震惊的文字方面的报道。这些文字是他在设拉子神庙的岩石和无数块泥板上发现的。

可当时的欧洲正忙着别的事情。所以直到18世纪末，第一批“楔形文碑铭”（之所以取这个名，是因为字母是楔形的，而楔子在拉丁语中念“Cuneus”）才被一位名叫尼布尔的丹麦调查员带回欧洲。后来经过30年的时间，德国有位名叫格罗特芬德的校长，耐心地破译了前4个字母D、A、R和SH，这是波斯国王大流士的名字。又过了20年，一位英国官员亨利·罗林森先生发现了著名的贝希斯顿铭文，给了

巴别塔

Compared to the problem of deciphering these nail-writings, the job of Champollion had been an easy one. The Egyptians used pictures. But the Sumerians, the earliest inhabitants of Mesopotamia, who had hit upon the idea of scratching their words in tablets of clay, had discarded pictures entirely and had evolved a system of V-shaped figures which showed little connection with the pictures out of which they had been developed. A few examples will show you what I mean. In the beginning a star, when drawn with a nail into a brick looked as follows:① This sign however was too cumbersome and after a short while when the meaning of “heaven” was added to that of star the picture was simplified in this way ② which made it even more of a puzzle. In the same way an ox changed from ③ into ④ and a fish changed from ⑤ into ⑥. The sun was originally a plain circle ⑦ and became ⑧. If we were using the Sumerian script today we would make an ⑨ look like ⑩. This system of writing down our ideas looks rather complicated but for more than thirty centuries it was used by the Sumerians and the Babylonians and the Assyrians and the Persians and all the different races which forced their way into the fertile valley.

The story of Mesopotamia is one of endless warfare and conquest. First the Sumerians came from the North. They were a white people who had lived in the mountains. They

我们一把破解西亚楔形文字之谜的宝贵钥匙。

与破解这些楔形文字相比，商博良的工作要容易得多。埃及人采用图画，而美索不达米亚最早的居民苏美尔人有了把自己的话刻在泥块上的想法。苏美尔人完全抛弃了图画，创造了一种V形符号系统，这种系统与象形文字没有多大关联。下面举几个例子加以说明。最初用钉子在石砖上画星星，就像①，可是这个图案太烦琐。不久，星星又包含了“天空”的意思，图案简化成②，这更让人迷惑了。同样的道理，牛从③变成④，鱼从⑤变成⑥。太阳原来用圆⑦来表示，后来变成⑧。如果今天我们用苏美尔文字，就会把⑨画成⑩。记录我们思想的文字系统，看似相当复杂，可在3000多年里，它一直被苏美尔人、巴比伦人、亚述人、波斯人及闯入这片肥沃谷地的所有其他民族使用。

美索不达米亚的故事里只有无休止的战争与征服。起初是苏美尔人从北方下来。他们是住在山区的白种人，有在山顶祭神的习惯。来到平原后，他们筑起人

had been accustomed to worship their Gods on the tops of hills. After they had entered the plain they constructed artificial little hills on top of which they built their altars. They did not know how to build stairs and they therefore surrounded their towers with sloping galleries. Our engineers have borrowed this idea, as you may see in our big railroad stations where ascending galleries lead from one floor to another. We may have borrowed other ideas from the Sumerians but we do not know it. The Sumerians were entirely absorbed by those races that entered the fertile valley at a later date. Their towers however still stand amidst the ruins of Mesopotamia. The Jews saw them when they went into exile in the land of Babylon and they called them towers of Bab-Illi, or towers of Babel.

In the fortieth century before our era, the Sumerians had entered Mesopotamia. They were soon afterwards over powered by the Akkadians, one of the many tribes from the desert of Arabia who speak a common dialect and who are known as the “Semites,” because in the olden days people believed them to be the direct descendants of Shem, one of the three sons of Noah. A thousand years later, the Akkadians were forced to submit to the rule of the Amorites, another Semitic desert tribe whose great King Hammurabi built himself a magnificent palace in the holy city of Babylon and who gave his people a set of laws which made the Babylonian state the best administered empire of the ancient world. Next the Hittites, whom you will also meet in the Old Testament, overran the Fertile Valley and destroyed whatever they could not carry away. They in turn were vanquished by the followers of the great desert God, Ashur, who called themselves Assyrians and who made the city of Nineveh the center of a vast and terrible empire which conquered all of western Asia and Egypt and gathered taxes from countless subject races until the end of the seventh century before the birth of Christ when the Chaldeans, also a Semitic

造小山，并在山顶修了祭坛。由于不知道如何建造阶梯，他们只好在塔的周围修一条盘山长廊。今天，我们的工程师借鉴了这一构思，比如你可以在大型火车站看到一层一层蜿蜒上升的走廊。我们可能也从苏美尔人那里借鉴过别的想法，只是我们不知道而已。在后来的岁月里，苏美尔人完全被进入这片富饶谷地的其他民族同化了。不过，他们的高塔依然矗立在美索不达米亚的废墟之中。犹太人流亡到巴比伦时，见过这些塔，并称之为巴比利塔或巴别塔。

圣城巴比伦

公元前4000年，苏美尔人进入美索不达米亚。他们不久就被阿卡德人征服。阿卡德人是一支来自阿拉伯沙漠的部落。这些部落说同一种语言，被称作“闪族人”，因为他们认为自己是诺亚的长子闪的嫡系后裔。1000年后，阿卡德人被迫臣服于亚摩利人。亚摩利人是另一支闪族沙漠部落。他们的汉谟拉比国王在圣城巴比伦为自己建造了一座雄伟的宫殿，还给臣民颁布了一套律法，使巴比伦成为古代治理得最好的帝国。你可以从《旧约》中了解到，接下来是赫梯人占领了这片沃土，还把不能带走的东西全部毁掉。而他们又被伟大的沙漠之神阿舒尔的追随者所征服。这些追随者自称是亚述人，他们让尼尼微成为一个令人生畏的大帝国的中心。

tribe, re-established Babylon and made that city the most important capital of that day. Nebuchadnezzar, the best known of their Kings, encouraged the study of science, and our modern knowledge of astronomy and mathematics is all based upon certain first principles which were discovered by the Chaldeans. In the year 538 B.C.a crude tribe of Persian shepherds invaded this old land and overthrew the empire of the Chaldeans. Two hundred years later, they in turn were overthrown by Alexander the Great, who turned the Fertile Valley, the old melting-pot of so many Semitic races, into a Greek province. Next came the Romans and after the Romans, the Turks, and Mesopotamia, the second centre of the world’s civilisation, became a vast wilderness where huge mounds of earth told a story of ancient glory.

这个帝国征服了整个西亚和埃及，并向无数个俯首称臣的部族索取税收。直到公元前7世纪末，另一支闪族部落重建了巴比伦，并让它成为当时最重要的政治中心。他们最著名的国王尼布甲尼撒鼓励科学研究。我们现在的天文学和数学知识，全都是以迦勒底人发现的某些基本原理为基础的。公元前538年，一支野蛮的波斯牧人部落侵占了这块古老的土地，颠覆了迦勒底帝国。200年后，这支部落又被亚历山大大帝征服。亚历山大把这块富饶的谷地、这个古代众多闪族部落的熔炉，变成了希腊的一个省。接下来是罗马人，之后是土耳其人。世界文明的第二个中心美索不达米亚成了茫茫荒野，留下一个个巨大的土丘讲述着古代故事的辉煌。