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rosetta_stone01.jpg - 插圖

 

Suppose that you were Champollion, and that you were examining a stack of papyrus sheets, all covered with hieroglyphics. Suddenly you came across a picture of a man with a saw. "Very well," you would say, "that means of course that a farmer went out to cut down a tree." Then you take another papyrus. It tells the story of a queen who had died at the age of eighty-two. In the midst of a sentence appears the picture of the man with the saw. Queens of eighty-two do not handle saws. The picture therefore must mean something else. But what?

如果你是 Champolion,你現在正在研究一堆寫滿埃及古文字的莎草紙。你看到其中一個圖畫中,有一個帶著鋸子的人。於是你說"太棒了,這個意思一定是一個農夫要去鋸倒一棵樹。""

接著你拿起另一張莎草紙,上面敘述了一位皇后在八十二歲時去世了。在這個句子當中又出現了這個一個男人帶著鋸子的圖畫。一位在八十二歲去世的皇后跟鋸子會有甚麼關係呢?

因此,這個"帶著鋸子的人"的圖畫應該有別的意思。

 

 

That is the riddle which the Frenchman finally solved. He discovered that the Egyptians were the first to use what we now call "phonetic writing"—a system of characters which reproduce the "sound" (or phone) of the spoken word and which make it possible for us to translate all our spoken words into a written form, with the help of only a few dots and dashes and pothooks.

這就是這位法國語言學家解開的難題,他發現,埃及人是第一個使用拼音文字的民族,這種文字符碼所記錄的是口說語言的"聲音",讓當時的人得以將口說的語言翻譯成手寫的文字。

 

Let us return for a moment to the little fellow with the saw. The word "saw" either means a certain tool which you will find in a carpenter's shop, or it means the past tense of the verb "to see."

讓我們回到那個帶著一個鋸子的小人身上。Saw 這個字,可能代表了你在木匠的店裡所看到的一種工具,也有可能代表動詞 to see 的過去式。

 

This is what had happened to the word during the course of centuries. First of all it had meant only the particular tool which it represented. Then that meaning had been lost and it had become the past participle of a verb. After several hundred years, the Egyptians lost sight of both these meanings and the picture came to stand for a single letter, the letter S.

這就是 saw 這個字在幾個世紀中所扮演的角色。剛開始它可能只代表了"鋸子"那個工具本身,接著,這個本義可能被暫時丟開,而變成了另一個動詞的過去式。在幾百年之後,這個小人的本義和衍伸義都被遺忘了,而這個小人最後代表了一個單一的字母 "S"。

 A short sentence will show you what I mean. Here is a modern English sentence as it would have been written in hieroglyphics.

如果我們用埃及的神聖書寫文字來表達一個英文的句子,

The  either means one of these two round objects in your head, which allow you to see or it means "I," the person who is talking.

這個圖形文字 zpage021a.gif - 插圖 可能代表了你臉上的那兩個圓圓的東西 - 眼睛 (eye) ,也可能代表"我" (I )。

[草莓按:因為這兩個字的聲音都相同,既然這個文字記錄的是聲音,這兩個聲音相同的字當然會使用同一個符號來記錄。]

 

A    is either an insect which gathers honey, or it represents the verb "to be" which means to exist. Again, it may be the first part of a verb like "be-come" or "be-have."

而這個符號 zpage021b.gif - 插圖 可以代表收集花蜜的昆蟲蜜蜂 ( bee),或者代表了動詞 "是"( be)。當然,它也可以做為動詞 be-come 和 be-have 的第一個音節。

In this particular instance it is followed by which means a "leaf" or "leave" or "lieve" (the sound of all three words is the same).

有些時候 be 後面會跟著這個圖案 zpage021c.gif - 插圖,這個圖案可能代表葉子 ( leaf ) ,或是聲音相同的 leave ( 離開) 或是 lieve。

 

Finally you get the picture of a  . It is a giraffe. It is part of the old sign-language out of which the hieroglyphics developed.

最後是這個圖形 zpage021d.gif - 插圖,這是一隻長頸鹿。

 

You can now read that sentence without much difficulty.
"I believe I saw a giraffe."

因此這整個句子的意思就是:

zpage020b.gif - 插圖

       I          believe          I      saw      a giraffe.

 

Having invented this system the Egyptians developed it during thousands of years until they could write anything they wanted, and they used these "canned words" to send messages to friends, to keep business accounts and to keep a record of the history of their country, that future generations might benefit by the mistakes of the past.

在發明了這個書寫系統之後,並經過了數千年的改良,埃及人終於得以書寫任何他們想要描述的事物,並使用這些文字把訊息送給友人,作商業簿記,或是記錄歷史事件,讓未來的世世代代得以從前人所曾經犯下的錯誤中受惠。

 

[本章完]

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我很喜歡這個章節的原因在於,當我越深究語言的結構和元素,就越驚異於人類語言體系的精密和創意,讓我不得不讚嘆這一個,在我們現今看來似乎非常理所當然的東西。這個東西,可以說是我們的祖先們送給我們的禮物,他們發明了一套套的符碼,透過這些符碼,他們想要告訴我們一些比這些符碼本身更為重要的事情,就是他們自身曾經有過的跌倒和美好的得到。

雖然透過符碼本身來傳遞的訊息似乎比符碼本身來得重要,然而,如果沒有這個符碼的存在,這一切都不可能會發生。透過這些文字的符碼,我們的先人們跟我們對話,就好像他們從來未曾離開過一樣。

我們應該對我們所擁有的文字感到珍惜,也應該對我們的先人們竟然有這樣的智慧和遠見發明文字符碼來傳遞經驗感到感恩。這個世界上有許多文明都失傳了,很重要的原因之一,這些文明並未建立自己的文字系統,端賴口傳來傳遞,因此當外族入侵,原本的耆老逐漸逝去,那所有原先的歷史和經驗都將被一起消滅。

有些文明的散逸是由於文字的失傳,雖然他們曾經建立了自己的文字系統,但是可能因為過於複雜,或是失去傳人,以至於再也沒有人能夠理解。

這塊神奇的羅賽塔巨石,多麼幸運的,同時篆刻了三種文字,而其中一種是當時仍然有人認識的,因此讓後人得以用文字比對的翻譯方式,把原先的 coding 還原。這也讓我們得窺當時埃及人曾經有過如何先進的書寫文化,而那樣的概念和系統是至今仍然運用在許多拼音文字上的,也讓我們得以認識,現今的拼音文字的起源是在甚麼地方。

當我們回顧人類曾經有過的足跡,就讓我們不禁讚嘆自身的渺小,也讓我們看到,在時間的洪流中,我們能存在至今,是一個多麼不容易的,由一連串的努力堆積而得的豐富。

 

 

 

 

 

 

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