The Sumerians, Maya and other ancient cultures created texts that have lasted hundreds and even thousands of years.
苏美尔人、玛雅人及来自其他古代文化的人们创造了有着数百数千年历史的语言讯息。
More than 2,000 years ago, in a temple in the city of Borsippa in ancient Mesopotamia, in what is now modern-day Iraq, a student was doing his homework. His name was Nabu-kusurshu, and he was training to be a temple brewer. His duties involved brewing beer for religious offerings, but also, learning to keep administrative records on clay tablets in cuneiform script, and preserving ancient hymns by making copies of worn-out tablets. These daily tasks, and his devotion to beer, writing and knowledge, made him part of an extraordinarily resilient literary legacy.
2000多年前，在位于现在伊拉克位置的古美索不达米亚Borsippa 市的一座庙宇中，一名学生正在做作业。他的名字是Nabu-kusurshu，这位学生正接受着称为一名寺庙酿酒师的培训。作为寺庙酿酒师，他的职责包括为宗教祭品酿造啤酒、学习如何用楔形文字在泥板上保存行政记录，以及复写旧泥板上的古代诗歌。这些日常工作，以及他对啤酒、写作和知识的热爱，使得他成为了极具研究价值的文化遗产的一部分。
A bilingual cuneiform tablet, listing Sumerian and Akkadian words.
一份写着苏美尔语和阿卡迪亚语的双语楔形石板
Cuneiform had already beenaround for roughly 3,000 years by the time Nabu-kusurshu picked up his reed stylus. It was invented by the Sumerians, who initially used it to record rations of food – and indeed, beer – paid to workers or delivered to temples. Over time, the Sumerian texts became more complex, recording beautiful myths and songs – including one celebrating the goddess of brewing, Ninkasi, and her skilled use of "the fermenting vat, which makes a pleasant sound". When Sumerian gradually slid out of common use, and was replaced by the more modern Akkadian, scribes cleverly wrote long lists of signs in both languages, essentially creating ancient dictionaries, to make sure the wisdom of the oldest tablets would always be understood.
在Nabu-kusurshu 用芦苇笔书写楔形文字时，这些文字已经有了约3000年的历史。这种文字是由苏美尔人发明的。最初这种文字被发明出来用于记录付给工人或送到寺庙的食物——实际上还包括了啤酒——的量。随着时间的推移，苏美尔语的文本变得愈加复杂，人们用它记录了美丽的神话和歌曲——包括一首庆祝酿造女神Ninkasi 的歌，歌词中描述了这位女神是如何熟练地使用“用于发酵的大桶并发出悦耳的声音”的。当苏美尔语逐渐淡出当时人们的视野而更现代的阿卡德语取而代之时，抄写员巧妙地用这两种语言写下了对照的符号列表，也就相当于古代版本的字典，来帮助人们理解那些最古老的石板上的智慧。
"He's learning how to write, and learning these lists, alongside other things, and then dedicating his work to the god Nabu and the temple," says Jay Crisostomo, a professor of ancient Near Eastern civilisations and languages at the University of Michigan, who has studied Nabu-kusurshu's tablets in depth.
密歇根大学研究古代近东文明和语言的教授Jay Crisostomo说道：“Nabu-kusurshu当时正在学习如何写作，学习这些文字转换列表等等内容，以将他的工作更好的奉献给Nabu神和神庙。”他对Nabu-kusurshu所书写的石板进行了深入研究。
It was these humble lists, quietly written in the shadow of a giant ziggurat – a pyramid-shaped stepped temple tower – that would earn Nabu-kusurshu immortality.
正是这些静静躺在巨大神龛中——金字塔形的阶梯式庙塔——外表不起眼的石板上的文字，使得Nabu-kusurshu在某种意义上称为了不朽的存在。
Many of us may daydream about writing a message that can be read in thousands of years' time, be it to sharewonderful poetry with future generations, or warn them about the hazards lurking in nuclear waste.
我们当中的许多人可能都曾经梦想过，要写下一段能在数千年后仍能被人阅读到的讯息，或是与他们分享美妙的诗词，或是警告他们核废料中潜伏的危险。
What's easy to forget is that this is not a mere thought experiment. People have successfully crafted immortal messages – or at least, very long-lasting ones – in the past.
很容易被人忘记的是，这些想法并不只是“想法”。过去的人们曾经成功地留下了永存的信息——至少是已经存在了很久的时间。
Some of them, like Nabu-kusurshu, even left us a key to entire civilisations.
他们中的一些人，比如Nabu-kusurshu，甚至给我们留下了打开文明瑰宝的钥匙。
In the 19th Century, scholars were racing to decipher a mysterious language found on cracked, charred tablets dug up from the sand-covered ruins of Mesopotamian temples and palaces: Sumerian, which had been thoroughly lost and forgotten.
19世纪时，学者们争先恐后地破译在美索不达米亚寺庙和宫殿废墟中挖掘出的一种神秘语言：苏美尔语，在当时这种语言已经完全失传并被人们所遗忘。
What made the challenge particularly tricky is that Sumerian is not related to any other known language. But the scholars had recently deciphered Akkadian, thanks to its link to surviving languages such as Arabic and Hebrew. And they had also found the ancient scribes' Sumerian-Akkadian clay lists, which they could use as a dictionary.
棘手的是，苏美尔语与任何已知语言都不存在联系。但学者们最近利用阿卡迪亚语与阿拉伯语和希伯来语等如今依然幸存着的语言间的联系成功破译了阿卡迪亚语。而且学者们还发现了古代抄写员所留下的苏美尔语和阿卡迪亚语的文字清单，可被用作字典参考。
Among them, one set of tablets stood out for its pristine condition and"distinctive fine script": Nabu-kusurshu's tablets. They were found next to some broken pillars and bricks when archeologists opened the long-buried rooms of the temple at Borsippa around 1880.
其中，有一组石碑因其保存完好的状态和“极具辨识力的精美文字”脱颖而出：也就是Nabu-kusurshu的石板。1880年左右，当考古学家打开博尔西帕神庙中被埋藏已久的房间时，在一些破碎的柱子和砖块旁发现了这些石板。
"A lot of what we know about Sumerian is via this one man, Nabu-kusurshu," says Crisostomo. He believes the young scribe, who would have been in his late teens or early 20s, produced nearly a quarter of all known copies of a bilingual sign list that proved crucial in the decipherment.
“许多我们对于苏美尔人的了解都是通过一个叫做Nabu-kusurshu的人”Crisostomo说。他认为这位年轻的抄写员年轻大约在十几或二十岁出头。近四分之一已知的双语符号列表副本都是由他书写的，这些资料对于后人破译苏美尔语起到了至关重要的作用。
To give you an idea of the size of his impact: these lists helped unlock Sumerian records spanning three millennia of history, including the Sumerians' pioneering use of the wheel, and the 60-minute hour. Altogether, across different languages, there aremore than a million cuneiform texts from the ancient Near East – and we can read them thanks to eternal clues left by ordinary scribes like Nabu-kusurshu.
简单阐释一下这位抄写员造成了多大的影响：这些列表有助于帮人们理解长达三千年历史的苏美尔人所作的记录，包括苏美尔人开创性的使用了轮子的记录和创造了60分钟一小时计时法。总之，在不同的语言中，或多或少地用到了超过一百万的古代近东楔形文字——而多亏了像Nabu-kusurshu这种普通抄写员留下的跨越前年的讯息，才使得我们能够理解这些语言。
