8　蘇美爾人

蘇美爾人的楔形文字作者，在泥板上給我們講述了亞述和巴比倫——閃族部落大熔爐的故事

15世紀是一個有著重大發現的時代。哥倫布想找到一條通往震旦島的路，卻意外發現了一塊無人知道的新大陸。一位奧地利主教派出一支探險隊，向東進發，尋找莫斯科大公的家鄉。但此次旅行徹底失敗了，因為直到他們下一代，才有西方人拜訪莫斯科。與此同時，一位名叫巴爾比羅的威尼斯人考察了西亞的廢墟，并帶回一些令人震驚的文字方面的報道。這些文字是他在設拉子神廟的巖石和無數塊泥板上發現的。

可當時的歐洲正忙著別的事情。所以直到18世紀末，第一批“楔形文碑銘”（之所以取這個名，是因為字母是楔形的，而楔子在拉丁語中念“Cuneus”）才被一位名叫尼布爾的丹麥調查員帶回歐洲。后來經過30年的時間，德國有位名叫格羅特芬德的校長，耐心地破譯了前4個字母D、A、R和SH，這是波斯國王大流士的名字。又過了20年，一位英國官員亨利·羅林森先生發現了著名的貝希斯頓銘文，給了

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

我們一把破解西亞楔形文字之謎的寶貴鑰匙。

與破解這些楔形文字相比，商博良的工作要容易得多。埃及人采用圖畫，而美索不達米亞最早的居民蘇美爾人有了把自己的話刻在泥塊上的想法。蘇美爾人完全拋棄了圖畫，創造了一種V形符號系統，這種系統與象形文字沒有多大關聯。下面舉幾個例子加以說明。最初用釘子在石磚上畫星星，就像①，可是這個圖案太煩瑣。不久，星星又包含了“天空”的意思，圖案簡化成②，這更讓人迷惑了。同樣的道理，牛從③變成④，魚從⑤變成⑥。太陽原來用圓⑦來表示，后來變成⑧。如果今天我們用蘇美爾文字，就會把⑨畫成⑩。記錄我們思想的文字系統，看似相當復雜，可在3000多年里，它一直被蘇美爾人、巴比倫人、亞述人、波斯人及闖入這片肥沃谷地的所有其他民族使用。

美索不達米亞的故事里只有無休止的戰爭與征服。起初是蘇美爾人從北方下來。他們是住在山區的白種人，有在山頂祭神的習慣。來到平原后，他們筑起人

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，并在山頂修了祭壇。由于不知道如何建造階梯，他們只好在塔的周圍修一條盤山長廊。今天，我們的工程師借鑒了這一構思，比如你可以在大型火車站看到一層一層蜿蜒上升的走廊。我們可能也從蘇美爾人那里借鑒過別的想法，只是我們不知道而已。在后來的歲月里，蘇美爾人完全被進入這片富饒谷地的其他民族同化了。不過，他們的高塔依然矗立在美索不達米亞的廢墟之中。猶太人流亡到巴比倫時，見過這些塔，并稱之為巴比利塔或巴別塔。

公元前4000年，蘇美爾人進入美索不達米亞。他們不久就被阿卡德人征服。阿卡德人是一支來自阿拉伯沙漠的部落。這些部落說同一種語言，被稱作“閃族人”，因為他們認為自己是諾亞的長子閃的嫡系后裔。1000年后，阿卡德人被迫臣服于亞摩利人。亞摩利人是另一支閃族沙漠部落。他們的漢謨拉比國王在圣城巴比倫為自己建造了一座雄偉的宮殿，還給臣民頒布了一套律法，使巴比倫成為古代治理得最好的帝國。你可以從《舊約》中了解到，接下來是赫梯人占領了這片沃土，還把不能帶走的東西全部毀掉。而他們又被偉大的沙漠之神阿舒爾的追隨者所征服。這些追隨者自稱是亞述人，他們讓尼尼微成為一個令人生畏的大帝國的中心。

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.

這個帝國征服了整個西亞和埃及，并向無數個俯首稱臣的部族索取稅收。直到公元前7世紀末，另一支閃族部落重建了巴比倫，并讓它成為當時最重要的政治中心。他們最著名的國王尼布甲尼撒鼓勵科學研究。我們現在的天文學和數學知識，全都是以迦勒底人發現的某些基本原理為基礎的。公元前538年，一支野蠻的波斯牧人部落侵占了這塊古老的土地，顛覆了迦勒底帝國。200年后，這支部落又被亞歷山大大帝征服。亞歷山大把這塊富饒的谷地、這個古代眾多閃族部落的熔爐，變成了希臘的一個省。接下來是羅馬人，之后是土耳其人。世界文明的第二個中心美索不達米亞成了茫?；囊埃粝乱粋€個巨大的土丘講述著古代故事的輝煌。