一星期有七天。
I don't need to tell you their names because you know them already.
我不必告訴你他們的名字因為你已經(jīng)知道了。
But have you any idea where and when it was that the days were each given a name?
但你知不知道在哪里,從什么時候起日子被取了名字?
Or who first had the idea of arranging them into weeks, so that they no longer flew past, nameless and in no order, as they did for people in prehistoric times?
誰第一個將日子歸納為星期,日子就不再像對于原始時期的人類那樣一天接著一天地過,沒有名字,沒有順序?
It wasn't in Egypt, but in another country which was no less hot,這件事并非發(fā)生在埃及,而是發(fā)生在另一個國家,那里的天氣也很炎熱,but where, instead of just one river, there were two: the Tigris and the Euphrates.
但那里不是有一條河,那里有兩條河:底格里斯河和幼發(fā)拉底河。
And because the important part of that country lay between two rivers,由于那個的國家的重要部分位于兩條河流之間,it was called Mesopotamia, which is Greek for the land "between the rivers".
它被稱為美索不達米亞,這個詞來源于希臘語,意思是“河流之間”的土地。
Mesopotamia is not in Africa, but in Asia,美索不達米亞不在非洲,而在亞洲,
though still not so very far from our part of the world, in a region called the Middle East, in the country we know as Iraq.
但是離我們的地區(qū)并不太遠,在一個稱作中東的地方,在我們知道的伊拉克境內(nèi)。
The Tigris and the Euphrates join together and then flow out into the Persian Gulf.
幼發(fā)拉底河和底格里斯河匯合,然后流入波斯灣。