纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 019莫尔德黄金披肩(2)

Undeterred by thoughts of ghosts or goblins, and exhilarated by the dazzling wealth of their find,

鬼怪的传说并没有吓退他们，闪闪发光的财宝令他们兴奋不已，

the workmen eagerly shared out chunks of the gold sheet, with the farmer taking the largest pieces.

热切地瓜分了黄金碎片，一个佃农得到了最大的一份。

It would have been easy for the story to end there.

故事原本很可能就到此为止了。

The year was 1833, and burials from a distant past, however exotic, enjoyed little legal protection.

在一八三三年，不论多奇特的远古墓葬都很难得到法律保护，

The isolated location of the burial site, near the town of Mold, not far from the north coast of Wales,

更何况墓葬地处威尔士北岸的莫尔德镇附近，位置偏远，

meant that the wider world could easily have continued in ignorance of its existence.

外面世界的人们很容易忽略它的存在。一切多亏了当地牧师科勒夫的好奇心。

That this didn't happen, owes everything to the curiosity of a local vicar, Reverend C.B. Clough,

他为这次发现撰写了一份报告，

who wrote an account of the find that aroused the interest of the Society of Antiquaries, hundreds of miles away in London.

引起了几百英里外伦敦文物研究协会的兴趣。

Three years after the spoils from the burial had been divided, the British Museum bought from the tenant farmer the first and the largest of the fragments of gold,

在墓葬的财宝被瓜分三年之后，大英博物馆才从那位佃农手里买到第一块金片，

which had been his share of the booty.

这是他当年分到的战利品，也是所有金片中最大的一块。

Much that the vicar recorded had by that stage disappeared, including virtually the whole skeleton.

牧师记录下来的物品大多消失了，其中包括整具骨骸。

This left only three large and twelve small crushed and flattened fragments of the decorated gold object.

剩下的只有三大块、十二小块被压扁的黄金碎片。

It took another hundred years for the British Museum to gather together enough of the remaining fragments to begin a complete reconstruction of this divided treasure.

大英博物馆又花了近百年的时间，才收集到了足够的碎片，对这件四分五裂的财宝进行全面修复。有些碎片至今仍未出现。

What was the object that these fragments belonged to? When had it been made? Who had worn it?

这些碎片过去曾组成一个什么样的物品？于何时制作？谁曾穿戴过它？

As more archaeological discoveries were made,

在十九世纪，伴随着更多考古发现，

it became clear that the Mold burial was indeed prehistoric, and dated to the newly identified age of bronze-around four thousand years ago.

人们逐渐确定莫尔德墓葬应属约四千年前的青铜时期。