世界小史 第35期:遼闊的平原

Picture a vast plain, crossed by these two rivers.

你想象一個極其遼闊的平原，這兩條河流經(jīng)這個平原。

A land of heat and swamp and sudden floods.

這個平原上的土地又熱又濕，有時洪水突如其來。

Here and there tall hills rise out of the plain.

在這個平原上到處都可以看到高大的山丘。

But if you dig into them you find that they aren't hills at all.

如果你挖掘它們，你會發(fā)現(xiàn)它們不是真正的山丘。

First you come across a lot of bricks and rubble, and when you dig deeper you meetstout, high walls.

首先你會找到一堆磚頭和瓦礫，當你越挖越深時，你會看到高大、堅固的城墻。

For these hills are really ruined towns and great cities laid out with long, straight streets, tall houses, palaces and temples.

因為這些山丘其實是衰敗的城市遺跡，有又長又筆直的街道，有高大的房屋、宮殿和廟宇。

But unlike Egypt's stone temples and pyramids, they were built with sun-baked bricks which cracked and crumbled over time, and eventually collapsed into great mounds of rubble.

它們不像埃及的廟宇和金字塔是用石頭建成的，而是用磚瓦建成，它們在陽光照射下漸漸碎裂并最終崩坍成龐大的瓦礫堆。

One such mound, standing in the desert, is all that remains of Babylon,今天在一個荒漠地區(qū)的一個這樣的瓦礫堆，就是歷史上的巴比倫，once the greatest city on earth, a cityswarming with people who came there from every part of the world to trade theirwares.

它曾是世界上最大的城市，來自世界各地的大批人群聚集在這里，他們把他們的商品送到這里并進行交換。

Upstream, at the foot of the mountains, sits another. This was Nineveh, the second greatest city in the land.

逆流而上，如今在山邊的一個這樣的瓦礫堆是這個國家的第二大城市：尼尼微。

Babylon was the capital of the Babylonians–that's easy enough to remember–Nineveh was that of the Assyrians.

巴比倫是巴比倫人的首都——這容易記住——而尼尼微曾是亞述人的首都。