文/科迪·C.德莱斯特拉蒂 译/郭亚文

By Cody C. Delistraty

The Psychological Comforts of Storytelling讲故事的心理慰藉

文/科迪·C.德莱斯特拉蒂 译/郭亚文

ByCody C. Delistraty

Why, throughout human history, have people been so drawn to fiction? 在人类历史上，人们为何对故事如此痴迷？

When an English archaeologist named George Smith was 31 years old, he became enchanted with an ancient tablet in the British Museum.Years earlier, in 1845, when Smith was only a five-year-old boy, Austen Henry Layard1奥斯丁·亨利·莱亚德（1817—1894），一译赖尔德。英国考古学家、近东考古学的创建者、楔形文字专家、艺术史专家、绘图家、收藏家、旅行家、作家及外交家。他以发掘尼尼微（Nineveh，今伊拉克北部）以南的亚述文化遗址尼姆鲁德（Nimrud，又译作宁录）而闻名于世。对揭示巴比伦和亚述的古代文明有重要贡献，被称为“英国西亚考古学之父”。, Henry Rawlinson2亨利·罗林森（1810—1895）,英国东印度公司军官、政治家、东方学专家，被称为“亚述学之父”。, and Hormuzd Rassam3霍姆兹德·拉萨姆（1826—1910），出生在现伊拉克北部地区，后移民至英国，亚述考古专家，曾担任奥斯丁·亨利·莱亚德的助手。began excavations across what is now Syria and Iraq. In the subsequent years they discovered thousands of stone fragments, which they later discovered made up 12 ancient tablets. But even after the tablet fragments had been pieced together, little had been translated. The 3,000-year-old tablets remained nearly as mysterious as when they had been buried in the ruins of Mesopotamian palaces.

乔治·史密斯是一名英国考古学家。31岁时，他迷上了大英博物馆里的一块古代泥板。早在1845年，史密斯当时只有5岁，奥斯丁·亨利·莱亚德、亨利·罗林森和霍姆兹德·拉萨姆就在现在的叙利亚和伊拉克境内开始了考古挖掘。他们在随后的几年里，发现了数以千计的泥板残片，并从中选出碎片拼成12块泥板。即使在泥板拼接好之后，上面文字的释义工作也几乎毫无进展，这些3000年前的泥板一如当年埋在美索不达米亚宫殿群废墟中一样，神秘莫测。

[2] Cuneiform is incredibly difficult to translate, especially when it is on tablets that have been hidden in Middle Eastern sands for three millennia. The script is shaped triangularly (cuneus means“wedge” in Latin) and the alphabet consists of more than 100 letters. It is used to write in Sumerian, Akkadian,Urartian, or Hittite, depending on where,when, and by whom it was written.It is also an alphabet void of4void of缺乏。vowels,punctuation, and spaces between words.

[3] Even so, Smith decided he would be the man to crack the code. Propelled by his interests in Assyriology and biblical archaeology, Smith, who was employed as a classifier by the British Museum, taught himself Sumerian and literary Akkadian.

[4] In 1872, after the tablets had been sitting in the British Museum’s storage for nearly two decades, Smith had a breakthrough: The complex symbols were describing a story. Upon translating the 11th tablet, now widely regarded as the most important part of the story, Smith told a coworker, “I am the first person to read that after 2000 years of oblivion.” The U.K. Prime Minister at the time, William Gladstone,even showed up to a lecture Smith later gave on the tablets, whereupon an audience member commented, “This must be the only occasion on which the British Prime Minister in office has attended a lecture on Babylonian literature.”

[2]要将楔形文字翻译过来难度近乎登天，更何况这些泥板已在中东地区的沙土中深埋了3000年之久。泥板上的字母呈三角形（在拉丁语中cuneus是“楔子”的意思），字母表上有100多个字母，用于苏美尔语、阿卡德语或者希泰语的书写，具体取决于何时、何地以及由谁所写。……