寄生草莓的英文俱樂部

The plan sounded simple enough but it took more than twenty years to solve the riddle. In the year 1802 a French professor by the name of Champollion began to compare the Greek and the Egyptian texts of the famous Rosetta stone. In the year 1823 he announced that he had discovered the meaning of fourteen little figures. A short time later he died from overwork, but the main principles of Egyptian writing had become known. Today the story of the valley of the Nile is better known to us than the story of the Mississippi River. We possess a written record which covers four thousand years of chronicled history.

這個計劃聽起來很簡單卻費時超過二十年才完成。西元 1802 年，一位法國名為 Champolion 的教授著手比較希臘文和羅賽塔之石上的埃及文字。1823 年，他發表所發現的十四個埃及圖畫文字所代表的意義。不久之後，他死於過勞 ，可是經由他的努力，解開埃及文字之謎的要旨已經大致齊備了。時至今日，埃及尼羅河谷的故事比密西西比河的故事更為有名，藉由他，我們擁有了涵蓋四千年的紀年史資料。

維基百科中對於 Champolion 的介紹  -> 連結

As the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics (the word means "sacred writing") have played such a very great role in history, (a few of them in modified form have even found their way into our own alphabet,) you ought to know something about the ingenious system which was used fifty centuries ago to preserve the spoken word for the benefit of the coming generations.

古埃及的 hieroglyphics ( 這個字的意思是神聖書寫 )[草莓的一大串 P.S. 所以請不要把這個字翻譯成象形文字，降子很沒禮貌齁。掰惹位，埃及文字的圖畫邏輯跟中國象形字的圖畫邏輯有非常大的差異，所以請不要把他們混為一談，降子還是很沒禮貌齁。你會喜歡人家把你當成你家隔壁的鄰居，然後把你們叫成同一個名字嗎？不會齁。要是有人拿隔壁鄰居的名字來稱呼你，你會不會想打他？會齁 ~~] 在歷史上扮演了極重要的角色，讓我們來認識一下，這個在五十個世紀之前被使用的，非常有創意的，為了將口說文字化以保留給世代子孫的埃及神聖書寫。

Of course, you know what a sign language is. Every Indian story of our western plains has a chapter devoted to strange messages written in the form of little pictures which tell how many buffaloes were killed and how many hunters there were in a certain party. As a rule it is not difficult to understand the meaning of such messages.

 我想你應該知道圖畫文字，每一個印第安故事都會有一個討論那些用小小的圖畫的形式呈現的符號來述說故事的章節。這樣的呈現方式並不太難理解。

[草莓按]在此 sign language 的語意並非手語，而是比較接近"圖畫文字"，或甚至可以解讀成"象形文字"。

Ancient Egyptian, however, was not a sign language. The clever people of the Nile had passed beyond that stage long before. Their pictures meant a great deal more than the object which they represented, as I shall try to explain to you now.

然而古埃及的神聖書寫並不是圖畫文字，生長在尼羅河流域的聰明人們很久以前就已經超越了那樣的境界了。他們的"類圖畫"文字的意涵遠超過圖象本身的內容。讓我們來看看，這些神聖書寫的符號邏輯。

[草莓按]歐耶，下面就是這一章最最精采的部分了，想想看，神秘的埃及神聖文字就要被揭開面紗囉 ........

耶耶耶耶耶 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

所以，讓我們來屏氣凝神休息待續一下，想一想，如果你是一個設計文字的人，除了用象形的方式，把你所看到的東西畫下來，還能用甚麼樣的方式來設計你的文字呢？