 Decoded at last: the ’classical holy grail’ that may rewrite the history of the world “古典圣杯”破译 世界历史改观 Scientists begin to unlock the secrets of papyrus scraps bearing long-lost words by the literary giants of Greece and Rome 科学家开始破解草纸残片，上面有古希腊罗马文学巨人遗失已久的作品 By David Keys and Nicholas Pyke 作者：大卫•科斯 和 尼古拉斯•派克 翻译：张江南 17 April 2005 2005年4月17日 For more than a century, it has caused excitement and frustration in equal measure - a collection of Greek and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of classical civilisation. If only it was legible. 一个多世纪以来，一堆数目巨大的古希腊罗马作品让人忧喜参半，只要破译了它们，古典文化的历史就将重写。 Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed. 牛津大学的科学家运用远红外技术揭开了被称为埃及奥斯莱卡浦草纸古卷的文物，这一突破性的成果被称为和发现圣杯的意义一样重大，这意味着几百部遗失的古希腊喜剧、悲剧和史诗即将重现天日。 In the past four days alone, Oxford’s classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament. 在过去的四天里，牛津的古典学者已经运用这一方法发现了一系列让人惊愕的东西，其中包括索福柯勒斯、欧里庇得斯、赫西奥德和其他古代世界文学巨人们消失了几千年的作品。古典学者们甚至相信他们可能找到遗失的基督教福音书，这些福音书的撰写年代和《新约》中时间最早的那些文献处于同一时代。 The original papyrus documents, discovered in an ancient rubbish dump in central Egypt, are often meaningless to the naked eye - decayed, worm-eaten and blackened by the passage of time. But scientists using the new photographic technique, developed from satellite imaging, are bringing the original writing back into view. Academics have hailed it as a development which could lead to a 20 per cent increase in the number of great Greek and Roman works in existence. Some are even predicting a “second Renaissance“. 在埃及中部一个古代垃圾堆里发现的浦草纸古卷光凭肉眼根本无法阅读，破朽不堪，满是虫蛀，时光抹黑了纸张，但科学家利用采用卫星影像技术的新型摄影器材，让古卷重现真容，学术界对此一片欢呼之声，认为这是学术上的一个巨大进步，增加了百分之二十的古希腊罗马杰作存世数量，有些人甚至预计将会出现“第二次文艺复兴”。 Christopher Pelling, Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford, described the new works as “central texts which scholars have been speculating about for centuries“. 英国牛津大学钦定讲座教授克利斯朵夫•派林把新发现的著作描述为“学者们已经梦想了几个世纪的核心文本”。 Professor Richard Janko, a leading British scholar, formerly of University College London, now head of classics at the University of Michigan, said: “Normally we are lucky to get one such find per decade.“ One discovery in particular, a 30-line passage from the poet Archilocos, of whom only 500 lines survive in total, is described as “invaluable“ by Dr Peter Jones, author and co-founder of the Friends of Classics campaign. 曾任教伦敦大学学院，现为密西根大学古典学负责人的一流英国学者里查德•扬科说：“正常情况下我们平均每十年才能侥幸发现一篇这样的文本。”特别值得一提的一个发现是找到了诗人Archilocos30行的一节诗，他的诗总共才保留下来500行，古典文献计划公益会发起人和联合创办者彼特•琼斯称这一发现的价值“不可估量”。 The papyrus fragments were discovered in historic dumps outside the Graeco-Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus (“city of the sharp-nosed fish“) in central Egypt at the end of the 19th century. Running to 400,000 fragments, stored in 800 boxes at Oxford’s Sackler Library, it is the biggest hoard of classical manuscripts in the world. 19世纪末，人们在埃及中部的希腊化的埃及小镇奥斯莱卡（Oxyrhynchus，含意是尖鼻子鱼城）外的历史废墟中发现了这些浦草纸古卷残片，最后残片的总数高达400，000片，保存在牛津大学萨克勒图书馆，这是世界上最大数量的古典文献手稿。 The previously unknown texts, read for the first time last week, include parts of a long-lost tragedy - the Epigonoi (“Progeny“) by the 5th-century BC Greek playwright Sophocles; part of a lost novel by the 2nd-century Greek writer Lucian; unknown material by Euripides; mythological poetry by the 1st-century BC Greek poet Parthenios; work by the 7th-century BC poet Hesiod; and an epic poem by Archilochos, a 7th-century successor of Homer, describing events leading up to the Trojan War. Additional material from Hesiod, Euripides and Sophocles almost certainly await discovery. 上个星期第一次被解读，以前不为人知的文献中，包括部分失传已久的悲剧：公元前五世纪希腊剧作家索福柯勒斯的《后裔》（the Epigonoi）；公元二世纪希腊作家鲁西安失传小说中的一部分；公元前七世纪诗人赫西奥德的作品；以及公元七世纪作为荷马后继者的Archilochos的一部史诗，这部史诗描述了导致特洛伊战争的那些事件。几乎可以肯定的是，赫西奥德、欧里庇得斯、索福柯勒斯的更多东西将会陆续被发现。 Oxford academics have been working alongside infra-red specialists from Brigham Young University, Utah. Their operation is likely to increase the number of great literary works fully or partially surviving from the ancient Greek world by up to a fifth. It could easily double the surviving body of lesser work - the pulp fiction and sitcoms of the day. 牛津大学的学者和犹他州布雷汉姆荣格大学的远红外专家并肩工作，他们的努力有可能把完整或部分存世的古希腊文学杰作的数量提高到五位数，而使原本存世较少的那些作品，比如那个时代的通俗小说和连续剧的数量翻番轻而易举。 “The Oxyrhynchus collection is of unparalleled importance - especially now that it can be read fully and relatively quickly,“ said the Oxford academic directing the research, Dr Dirk Obbink. “The material will shed light on virtually every aspect of life in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, and, by extension, in the classical world as a whole.“ 牛津大学学者，领导这项工作的德克•欧宾客博士说：“奥斯莱卡古卷的重要性无可比拟，特别是今天人们能够完整和较为方便地阅读它们的时候。这些文献把希腊和罗马时代埃及，再广泛一点的话，把作为一个整体的古代世界的实际生活的方方面面展示了出来了。” The breakthrough has also caught the imagination of cultural commentators. Melvyn Bragg, author and presenter, said: “It’s the most fantastic news. There are two things here. The first is how enormously influential the Greeks were in science and the arts. The second is how little of their writing we have. The prospect of having more to look at is wonderful.“ 这一突破性进展也唤起了文化评论家的想象力，作家和作品推荐者Melvyn Bragg说：“这是一条最让人联想翩翩的新闻，这里有两点：第一，那些希腊人对艺术和科学的影响如此巨大；第二，他们保留下来的作品如此之少。可以看到更多他们的作品真是太妙了！” Bettany Hughes, historian and broadcaster, who has presented TV series including Mysteries of the Ancients and The Spartans, said: “Egyptian rubbish dumps were gold mines. The classical corpus is like a jigsaw puzzle picked up at a jumble sale - many more pieces missing than are there. Scholars have always mourned the loss of works of genius - plays by Sophocles, Sappho’s other poems, epics. These discoveries promise to change the textual map of the golden ages of Greece and Rome.“ 历史学家，播音员Bettany Hughes曾制作过一个关于古代世界和斯巴达奥秘的电视系列片，他说：“埃及的垃圾堆曾经是金矿，古典遗物就像七巧板一样，在杂物拍卖场买来残片后一点点拼凑起来。遗失的比保留下来的多得多，学究们总是哀叹天才们的著作，象索福柯勒斯的戏剧、萨福的其他诗歌和史诗遗失了，这一发现将重绘希腊和罗马黄金时代的文献地图。” When it has all been read - mainly in Greek, but sometimes in Latin, Hebrew, Coptic, Syriac, Aramaic, Arabic, Nubian and early Persian - the new material will probably add up to around five million words. Texts deciphered over the past few days will be published next month by the London-based Egypt Exploration Society, which financed the discovery and owns the collection. 这些文献主要用希腊语，但有时用拉丁语、希伯来语、古埃及语、古叙利亚语、亚拉姆语、阿拉伯语、努比亚语和早期波斯语，当人们读通所有文献后，新发现材料的总字数将达五百万字。过去几天解读出来的文献下个月将由位于伦敦，资助这一发现并拥有这些古卷的埃及探险协会公布。 A 21st-century technique reveals antiquity’s secrets 21世纪的技术揭开了古物的秘密 Since it was unearthed more than a century ago, the hoard of documents known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri has fascinated classical scholars. There are 400,000 fragments, many containing text from the great writers of antiquity. But only a small proportion have been read so far. Many were illegible. 被称为埃及奥斯莱卡浦草纸古卷的储藏文献已经出土一个多世纪了，它一直让学者们梦绕魂牵，有400，000片残片，其中很多写有古代伟大作家的文本，但到人们目前为止只能解读其中一小部分，大部分字迹模糊，难于辨认。 Now scientists are using multi-spectral imaging techniques developed from satellite technology to read the papyri at Oxford University’s Sackler Library. The fragments, preserved between sheets of glass, respond to the infra-red spectrum - ink invisible to the naked eye can be seen and photographed. 现在，科学家利用从卫星技术发展来的多光谱成像技术来解读牛津大学萨克勒图书馆保管的埃及奥斯莱卡浦草纸古卷。红外线谱把这些保存在玻璃板之间的残片上肉眼无法识别的墨迹显现出来，并拍成照片。 The fragments form part of a giant “jigsaw puzzle“ to be reassembled. Missing “pieces“ can be supplied from quotations by later authors, and grammatical analysis. 一位天才作者作品的残片将象拼七巧板一样拼合起来，遗失的“部分”可以由后代作者的引文补充，或通过语法分析补充。 Key words from the master of Greek tragedy 一位希腊悲剧大师作品的几段精彩对话： Speaker A: . . . gobbling the whole, sharpening the flashing iron. 演说者A：……一口吞下，磨亮利刃 Speaker B: And the helmets are shaking their purple-dyed crests, and for the wearers of breast-plates the weavers are striking up the wise shuttle’s songs, that wakes up those who are asleep. 演说者B：头盔上紫色的缨冠晃动，身着胸甲的战士开始演奏聪颖的梭子之歌，唤醒还在沉睡的人。 Speaker A: And he is gluing together the chariot’s rail. 演说者A：他还粘起了战车的围栏。 These words were written by the Greek dramatist Sophocles, and are the only known fragment we have of his lost play Epigonoi (literally “The Progeny“), the story of the siege of Thebes. Until last week’s hi-tech analysis of ancient scripts at Oxford University, no one knew of their existence, and this is the first time they have been published. 上述作品是希腊戏剧家索福柯勒斯创作的，是他失传的剧本《后裔》中仅存的片段，讲述了围攻底比斯的故事。在上星期牛津大学使用高科技分析古卷之前，没有人知道它们的存在，这些是东西是第一次发表。 Sophocles (495-405 BC), was a giant of the golden age of Greek civilisation, a dramatist who work alongside and competed with Aeschylus, Euripides and Aristophanes. 索福柯勒斯（公元前495--405），希腊文明黄金时代的一位巨人，戏剧家，他与埃斯库罗斯、欧里庇得斯和阿里斯托芬一起创作并相互竞争。 His best-known work is Oedipus Rex, the play that later gave its name to the Freudian theory, in which the hero kills his father and marries his mother - in a doomed attempt to escape the curse he brings upon himself. His other masterpieces include Antigone and Electra. 他最著名的作品就是《奥狄浦斯王》，后来的弗洛伊德理论借用了这一名字，在这部戏中，主人公无望地试图逃避他自己带给自己的诅咒，但最终还是杀父娶母。索福柯勒斯创作的经典之作还包括《安提戈涅》和《厄勒克特拉》。 Sophocles was the cultured son of a wealthy Greek merchant, living at the height of the Greek empire. An accomplished actor, he performed in many of his own plays. He also served as a priest and sat on the committee that administered Athens. A great dramatic innovator, he wrote more than 120 plays, but only seven survive in full. 索福柯勒斯是一个富裕的希腊商人的儿子，受过良好教育，生活在希腊最强盛的时候，作为一个多才多艺的演员，他参与演出大部分自己的戏剧，他还是一个祭师，并在管理雅典的委员会中任职。作为一个伟大的戏剧改革者，他写了120多部戏剧，但只有七部完整保存下来。 Last week’s remarkable finds also include work by Euripides, Hesiod and Lucian, plus a large and particularly significant paragraph of text from the Elegies, by Archilochos, a Greek poet of the 7th century BC. 上个星期引人注目的发现还包括欧里庇得斯、赫西奥德和鲁西恩的作品，以及大量公元前七世纪古希腊诗人Archilochos挽歌中极有意义的段落。 (责任编辑：admin) |