BBC 100件藏品中的世界史011:King Den's Sandal Label古埃及王丹的涼鞋標(biāo)簽

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011： - King Den's Sandal Label

第十一集——古埃及王丹的涼鞋標(biāo)簽

King Den's sandal label (made around 3000 BC). Hippopotamus ivory, found in Abydos, Egypt

古埃及第一王朝第五位國王丹的涼鞋標(biāo)簽，公元前約3000年，河馬牙制品，出土于埃及阿拜多斯。

There's a compelling showbiz mythology of the modern big city - the energy and the abundance, the proximity to culture and power, the streets that just might be paved with gold. We've seen it and we've loved it, on stage and on screen. But we all know that in reality big cities are noisy, potentially violent and alarmingly anonymous. We sometimes just can't cope with the sheer mass of people.

現(xiàn)代大城市簡直是創(chuàng)造了一種嚎頭十足的娛樂圈神話——能量充沛、物欲橫流，文化與權(quán)力高度集中，仿佛街道都可以是黃金鋪成的。舞臺上、屏幕上那一切的一切，我們對其“所見即所愛”。然而我們也深知，在現(xiàn)實中，大城市也充斥著嘈雜、潛在暴力和驚人匿名性。有時，我們簡直就是無法應(yīng)付這樣龐大、高度集中的人群。

Apparently, if you look at how many numbers we're likely to store in our mobile phone, or how many names we're likely to list on a social networking site, it's very rare even for city dwellers to exceed a couple of hundred.

顯而易見的，假如你看一下通常我們手機上可能儲存的電話號碼，或者我們在社交網(wǎng)站上添加的好友名單，就會發(fā)現(xiàn)經(jīng)常一個城市居民的社交圈人群很少會有超過幾百。

Social anthropologists delightedly point out that this is the size of the social group we'd have had to handle in a large Stone Age village. According to them, we're all still trying to cope with modern city life with a Stone Age social brain.

于是乎，社會學(xué)家得意洋洋地指出，早在石器時代的大村落里，幾百這個數(shù)字我們恰好可以應(yīng)付得來，這就是當(dāng)時一個社會群體的合理大小。

So how do you lead and control a city or a state where most people don't know each other, and you can only personally persuade a very small percentage of the inhabitants? It's the central theme of this week's programmes, and it's been the key political question for over five thousand years, since the growth of the world's first cities and states.

那么，你應(yīng)該如何領(lǐng)導(dǎo)和控制一個城市與國家呢?絕大多數(shù)人都不認識彼比，你自己也只能親身說服比例非常小的居民。這是我們本周節(jié)日的中心主題;而且在超過五千年的人類歷史上，自從世界上第一座城市、第一個國家的出現(xiàn)，這也是一個關(guān)鍵的政治問題。

These grew up in the world's great fertile river valleys, the Euphrates, the Tigris and the Indus, but I want to start with the most famous river of them all, the Nile.

最早期的城市與國家崛起于世界上偉大的肥沃河谷里，幼發(fā)拉底河、底格里斯河、印度河等等，然而我想從這所有河流中最著名的尼羅河開始。

"There's no doubt that warfare and the coercive power of the king is very much at the heart of the regime from an early period." (Toby Wilkinson)

“毫無疑問，國王的戰(zhàn)爭力與威攝力自古以來就是制權(quán)的心臟要素。”托比·威爾金森說道。

"It's a fine image of bashing - so it's violent, it's elegant, expressive, and it's beautiful as well." (Steve Bell)

“這威攝力的絕妙寫照——充滿了暴力、典雅、表現(xiàn)力以及美感。”史蒂夫·貝爾說道。

Today's object shows us that in the Egypt of the pharaohs, the answer to the question of how to exert leadership and state control over a large population was quite simple: force.

今天的物品向我們展示了對于古埃及的法老而言，如何發(fā)揮領(lǐng)導(dǎo)力與領(lǐng)導(dǎo)一個人口眾多的國家呢?最簡單的答案就是：權(quán)力。

If you're going to talk about the Egypt of the pharaohs, the British Museum gives you a spectacular choice - monumental sculptures, painted mummy cases, and much much more but, as we're talking about a society that was created by its river, I've chosen an object that came quite literally from the mud of the Nile.

如果你想談?wù)勱P(guān)于埃及的法老，大英博物館提供了極為壯觀的選擇：不朽的雕塑、彩繪木乃伊棺槨等等，種類繁多，不可勝數(shù);然而我們想要談?wù)摰氖且粋€河流哺育起來的國度，我現(xiàn)在選擇的這物品，毫不夸張地說，正是來自尼羅河的泥槳。

It's made from a tusk of a hippo, and it belonged to one of Egypt's first pharaohs - King Den. Perversely for an object that's going to let us explore power on a massive scale, it is absolutely tiny.

它由河馬的獠牙制成，屬于埃及法老之一的國王丹所有。反差強烈的是，將要帶領(lǐng)我們探索強大權(quán)力，卻是一件微不起眼的小物品。

I'm holding it now. It's about one and a half inches square, it's very thin and it looks and feels a bit like a modern-day business card. But, in fact, it's a label - a label that was once attached to a pair of shoes; not any old shoes - these were sandals of the highest status, because this little ivory plaque is a name tag for an Egyptian pharaoh, made to accompany him as he set off to the afterlife.

我現(xiàn)在就拿在手心里。它大約有一英寸半，正方形，非常的薄，外觀和感覺有點像是現(xiàn)代名片。但事實上它是一件標(biāo)簽，附在一雙鞋上的標(biāo)簽;不過可不是隨隨便便的一雙爛鞋，而是一雙最高地位人穿的涼鞋，因為這張小小的牙牌是一位古埃及法老的名片，制造出來以供他來世使用。

The nearest modern equivalent I can think of to this is the ID card that everybody working in an office now has to wear round their necks to get past the security check. It's not immediately clear who was meant to read these labels, whether they're aimed at the gods of the afterlife or perhaps the servants that might not know their way around.

我認為這物品最相當(dāng)于現(xiàn)代社會的辦公室里，大家都佩戴在脖子上通過安全檢查時的工作身份牌。我們現(xiàn)在不能立刻知道究竟這標(biāo)簽是給誰看的，也許是來世中的神靈，也許是那些不認識自己國王的仆人們吧。

The images themselves are made by scratching into the ivory and then rubbing a black resin into the incisions, so that you get a wonderful contrast between the black and the cream of the ivory. So, through this little ivory name tag, we're immediately close to these first kings of Egypt; rulers around 3000 BC, of a new kind of civilisation that would produce some of the greatest monumental art and architecture ever.

這些圖像是先在這牙片上雕刻出來，然后再浸漬在黑色樹脂里，使樹脂滲進牙片的下凹處，于是就產(chǎn)生了美觀而對比強烈的黑白圖案。所以通過這小小的牙牌名片，我們馬上與那些埃及早期的法老王們接近了距離，他們是公元前3000年左右一種新文明的統(tǒng)治者，那文明產(chǎn)生了人類史上一些最偉大的不朽藝術(shù)與建筑。

Before the first pharaohs, Egypt was very much a country divided, split between the east-west Mediterranean-facing strip of the Delta in the north, and the north-south string of settlements along the river itself. With the Nile flooding every year, harvests were plentiful, so there was enough food for a rapidly growing population and there was still some surplus to trade with. But there was absolutely no extra fertile land beyond the flooding area.

然而在早期法老王出現(xiàn)之前，埃及還是一個四分五裂的國家，分割成位于北方三角洲、面向地中海的東部西部地帶，及沿著尼羅河的南北一長串的各個定居村落。隨著尼羅河年年一漲一息的洪水，農(nóng)作物年年豐收，所以支撐了人口的持續(xù)增加，同時還有一些盈余可以進行貿(mào)易。

So, inevitably, people fought over what land was available. Conflict followed conflict, with those from the Delta eventually being conquered by the people from the south and, just before 3000 BC, Egypt was united. It's one of the earliest societies that we can think of as a state in the modern sense, and as one of its earliest leaders, King Den had to address all the problems of control and co-ordination that a modern state has to confront today.

然而在尼羅河每年洪水淹沒不到的地方，卻絕對沒有肥沃的土壤，于是，不可避免的，人民開始爭奪那片最有利用價值的土地。年復(fù)一年，連綿不斷的沖突，最終三角洲一帶的部落被業(yè)自南方的人所征服了，于是古埃及大概于公元前3000年左右統(tǒng)一起來。這個社會人類歷史上具有真正現(xiàn)代意義的最早期國家之一，而作為這早期古埃及的法老王之一的國王丹，也必須想辦法如何去控制與調(diào)協(xié)整個王國，這些也是今天一個現(xiàn)代國家都會面對到的問題。

You might not expect to discover how he did it from the label on his shoes, but Den's sandals were no ordinary shoes, they were very high status items - and the Keeper of the Sandals was one of the high court officials, so it's not so surprising that on the back of the label we have a clear statement of how this pharaoh exercised power. The model evolved in Den's Egypt five thousand years ago resonates uncannily around the world to this day.

你可能意料不到居然會在他鞋上的標(biāo)簽了解到他是如何做到統(tǒng)治他的王朝的，然而國王丹的涼鞋可不是尋常之物，它們的地位也相當(dāng)之高;其實掌管法老王的涼鞋當(dāng)時也是一種宮殿高職官員，因此我們現(xiàn)在看到的這枚牙牌標(biāo)簽背面居然如此清晰地描繪出法老如何行使權(quán)力的生動場面，事實上也不以為奇。國王丹五千年前行使權(quán)力的模式，在如今全世界范圍內(nèi)看起來，仍舊是不可思議的熟悉。

On the other side from the sandals [in the museum] is their owner, dressed in a royal head-dress with a mace in one hand and a whip in the other. King Den stands in combat, authoritatively smiting an enemy who cowers at his feet. Of course the first thing we look for is his sandals but, disappointingly, he's barefoot.

在這標(biāo)簽粘在涼鞋(陳列在博物館里)的背面，刻畫了涼鞋的主人，戴著皇家頭飾，一手持著狼牙棒，一手握著長鞭。國王丹站在戰(zhàn)場上，威風(fēng)凜凜地鞭打著蜷縮在他腳下的敵人。當(dāng)然，我們首先尋找的是他的涼鞋，但令人失望的是，他是赤著腳。

This little label is the first image in our series of a ruler - and it's striking that, right at the beginning, the ruler wants to be shown as commander-in-chief, conquering his foe. This is how, from earliest times, power has been projected through images. There's something disturbingly familiar about this kind of image - it looks to us indeed a bit like a contemporary political cartoon, and so we showed it to the political cartoonist, Steve Bell, to ask him what he made of it:

這小小的標(biāo)簽刻畫了我們這系列中的第一位統(tǒng)治者，令人驚奇的是從人類最早期社會，統(tǒng)治者就希望作為軍隊的統(tǒng)帥，征服他的仇敵。這就是最早期權(quán)力是如何體現(xiàn)出來的。類似這樣的場面熟悉得令人不安，看上去幾乎有點像是現(xiàn)代的政治卡通。于是，我們把這標(biāo)簽?zāi)媒o政治漫畫家史蒂夫·貝爾看，問問他的想法：

"Well, looking at this tiny object now, it is a genuinely archetypal image of power - it's the exercise of power, it's somebody bossing it over somebody else. And this image of having a larger character dominating a smaller character is obviously not to do with physical size, it's to do with symbolic size, symbolic weight, and that even carries on into the world of naturalistic political cartoons to this very day. I did it myself only yesterday. You find that characters you focus on often you draw bigger, just because that's where the meaning is. Here we are - one of the earliest political images of all time - it is quite something. There're no laughs there - but that comes later!"

“這小小的物品看起來，真的是一種權(quán)力的真正原型形象，代表權(quán)力的行使，一個人對別人的鎮(zhèn)壓。你看，這標(biāo)簽上是一個身形大得多的人在威嚇一個身形較小的人，顯然這并不是一種真實肉體上的體型差異，而是象征性的。這一點甚至當(dāng)今政治漫畫界仍然很自然運用著。我自己昨天才畫過這種類型的。我們看到的是人類歷史上最早的政治圖像之一。這畫面挺嚴肅的，沒有什么笑點，不過那些都是后話了!”

The label-maker's job 'was' deadly serious - to keep his leader looking invincible and semi-divine, and to show that Den was the only man who could guarantee what Egyptians, like everybody else, wanted from their rulers - law and order. Within the pharaoh's realm, everybody was expected to conform and to take on a clear Egyptian identity. The message of our sandal label is that the price of opposition was high and painful. And the message is carried not only in images but by writing - there are some early hieroglyphs scratched into the ivory.

標(biāo)簽制造的工作可是有“致命”的重要性，得確保把他的統(tǒng)治者描繪成無往不勝的半神，也得表現(xiàn)出國王丹是唯一能為他的國家?guī)矸膳c秩序的人——古埃及人，像任何其他人一樣，都希望他們的統(tǒng)潔者能做到這點。在法老的皇權(quán)下，人人都得遵從并體現(xiàn)出一種明確的埃及人身份特征。我們這枚涼鞋標(biāo)簽上傳達出的信息是：強權(quán)鎮(zhèn)壓的代價是昂貴而痛苦的。這信息不僅僅通過畫面表達出來，而且刻在牙牌上邊的早期象形文字也說很清楚。

The inscriptions give us the name of King Den and, between him and the enemy, are the chilling words 'they shall not exist'. This 'other' is going to be obliterated. Who he is we don't know but, to the right of the label, is an inscription which reads: 'the first occasion of smiting the east'. And, as the sandy ground beneath the figures rises to the right-hand side, it's been suggested that the enemy comes from the east, from Sinai. All the tricks of savage political propaganda are already here - the ruler calm and victorious, the alien misshapen, defeated enemy.

這銘文告訴了我們這法老的名字是丹，然后在他與他的敵人之間是一句令人心寒的話：“他們不得存在。”這些“他們”終將被消滅。雖然我們不知道這里的“他們”指的是誰，不過這標(biāo)簽的右側(cè)刻的是：“第一次東征”。而且在人物形像腳下的沙質(zhì)地面向東方延伸，這說明了敵人是來自于東部的，有人在猜，也許是西奈半島?？傊?，這里集中體現(xiàn)了所有野蠻的政治宣傳伎倆：順我者昌，逆我者亡。

The area that this Egyptian state was able to coerce and control is staggering; at its height, it included virtually all the Nile Valley from the Delta to what is modern Sudan, as well as a huge area to the east up to the borders of Sinai. We asked archaeologist Toby Wilkinson what state building on this scale required:

當(dāng)時埃及國王能夠進行強權(quán)統(tǒng)治的疆土范圍之大令人咋舌，在王朝鼎盛時期，幾乎囊括整個尼羅河谷，從三角洲到現(xiàn)代蘇丹，向東直達西奈半島的邊界。我們請教了考古學(xué)家托比·威爾金森，到底建設(shè)這么大規(guī)模的王朝需要什么呢?

"Well obviously this is an early period in Egypt's history, when the nation is still being consolidated, not so much territorially as ideologically and psychologically. And the king and his advisers are looking for ways to reinforce Egypt's sense of its own nationhood, and support for their regime.

“嗯，顯然這是埃及歷史上一個早期的階段，國家仍舊在擴張兼并中，思想上與心理上還沒形成一種固定疆土的理念。法老與他的智囊團不斷地尋找可以進一步強化埃及自身的國家民族意識及支持他們政權(quán)的方法。

And I think they realised, as world leaders have realised throughout history, that nothing binds a nation and a people together quite so effectively as a foreign war against a common enemy, whether that enemy is real or manufactured. And so warfare plays really a key role in, if you like, the consolidation of the Egyptian sense of their own nationhood."

我認為他們已經(jīng)意識到了，作為世界各國領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人都清楚的一點，縱觀歷史，對于一個國家或一個民族而言，沒有什么比團結(jié)一致對抗一個共同敵人具有更大的約束力與凝聚力，這敵人真實也好，假想也罷，都無所謂。因為我們可以說，戰(zhàn)爭是真的扮演了關(guān)鍵的作用，幫助埃及人進一步鞏固自我的建國意識。”

It's a discouragingly familiar strategy. You win hearts and minds at home by focussing on the threats from abroad, but the weapons that you need to crush the enemy can come in handy when you're dealing with domestic opponents as well. The political rhetoric of foreign aggression is backed up by very brisk policing at home.

這是一種令人沮喪的熟悉伎倆。當(dāng)把所有注意力集中到對抗外敵上，你能夠贏取國內(nèi)的民心;然而在需要的場合上，用來粉碎敵人的武器也可以直接施用于自己國內(nèi)的有反抗情緒的老百姓身上。對外侵略的政治修辭總有相當(dāng)犀利的國內(nèi)政策來支持。

The apparatus of the modern state had been forged. And the enduring consequences were artistic as well as political. Only power of this order could organise the enormous building projects that these early pharaohs embarked on.

現(xiàn)代國家這種機器建造起來了，產(chǎn)生了藝術(shù)上與政治上的持久性后果。也只有這種秩序的力量，能組織起人力建設(shè)起這些早期法老下令開工的那些偉大建設(shè)工程。

Den's elaborate tomb with granite shipped from hundreds of miles away, and the later, even grander pyramids, were possible only because of the extraordinary power the Egyptian pharaohs could exercise over the minds and the bodies of their subjects.

國王丹那宏偉的墳?zāi)股系墓矋弾r，都來自于數(shù)百英里外的地區(qū)。后來的金字塔墓更加是氣勢恢弘。這一切，都是因為埃及法老在埃及民眾心目中，擁有可以操縱他們身心、超同尋常的力量。

In the next programme, I'll be looking further east, beyond Sinai to Mesopotamia - modern-day Iraq. Two rivers there, not one, and not one great unitary state like Egypt, but competing groups of rich city states. But the same problems confront the rulers: how do you control these large, prosperous - but always turbulent - populations? And in part at least, they came up with the same answer: force.

在下期的節(jié)目中，我去探索更加?xùn)|方的地方，跨過西奈半島，到達美索不迷米亞——現(xiàn)代的伊拉克。那里流淌著不止一條，而是兩條河流，那里也沒有一個如同埃及一樣偉大的統(tǒng)一中央王國，而且是散布著彼此競爭的富裕城市國家。然而所有的統(tǒng)治者都面臨著同樣的問題：究竟應(yīng)該如何控制好這些人口眾多而繁榮，共同又動蕩不安的民族?至少從某方面而言，他們也采同了相同的措施：權(quán)力。