For both the Babylonians and the Assyrians worshipped the sun and the moon, and also the stars. 因为巴比伦尼亚人和亚述人都把太阳、月亮和星星当作他们的神祈祷， On clear, warm nights, throughout the year and over centurie...
One of the first Babylonian kings to rule over the whole region left a long and important inscription, engraved in stone. 统治全国的头一批巴比伦国王中有一个国王留下了一段这样的重要铭文，它被凿在一块石头上。 I...
The script is called cuneiform, meaning wedge-shaped. 人们称它为cuneiform，意思是楔形文字。 Books made of papyrus were unknown to the Mesopotamians. 人们在美索不达米亚不曾发现过莎草纸书。 They inscribed these signs in...
A great number of tombs were also found that appeared to date from the same time as Cheops's Great Pyramid in Egypt. 人们在这里找到了一大批墓穴，它们大约跟埃及的齐阿普斯金字塔建造的时期相同。 But while the pyramid...
Unlike Egypt, Mesopotamia was rarely ruled by just one king. 美索不达米亚（两河流域）不像埃及，它很少由一位国王统治，Nor did any single empire survive long within firm frontiers. 也没有一个王朝的统治延续长久、...
Picture a vast plain, crossed by these two rivers. 你想象一个极其辽阔的平原，这两条河流经这个平原。 A land of heat and swamp and sudden floods. 这个平原上的土地又热又湿，有时洪水突如其来。 Here and there...
The ancient temples were shut down, and King Akhenaton and his wife moved into a new palace. 古老的庙宇被关闭，阿肯纳顿和他的妻子一道迁进一座新宫殿。 Since he was utterly opposed to tradition, and in favor of fine new idea...
Only rarely in the course of all that time did people turn against this strict conformity. 在这整个漫长的时期中人们只对这种严格的老一套反对过两次。 Once was shortly after the reign of King Cheops, about 2,100 BC, when the...
They wrote on long strips of this papyrus, which were then rolled up into scrolls. 他们写在这种莎草纸的长条片上，然后卷成书卷。 A whole heap of these scrolls has survived. 一大堆这样的书卷被保存下来了。 And when w...
Now then, think what a job it must have been to decipher all that Egyptian writing when people became interested in hieroglyphs again, 200 years ago. 那么现在想一想，当人们在200年前重新对象形文字产生兴趣，要读懂所有的古...
