英国语文第六册(双语):尼罗河流域(5)
At this long distance from the coast of the Mediterranean he arrives at Ipsambul, or Abou-Simbel. Here, on the confines of the pathless and unpeopled desert, stands one of Egypt's most striking marvels—the Temple of the Sun, built by Ramesese, whose gigantic statue sits there in the solitude, still unbroken, and revealed from head to foot. This statue is repeated four times: two are buried in the sand, and the third is overthrown and in fragments; but from the fourth still looks down the face of the greatest man of the old world, who flourished long before the rise of Greece and Rome—the first conqueror recorded in history—the glory of Egypt, the terror of Asia—the second founder of Thebes, which must have been to the world then what Rome was in the days of her empire.
从地中海沿岸长途跋涉之后，游客来到了阿布辛拜勒。这里，在人迹罕至的沙漠边界上，矗立着埃及最令人惊叹的奇迹之一——由拉美西斯建造的太阳神庙。拉美西斯的巨大雕像孤独地矗立在那里，依然完好无损，从头到脚显露无遗。该雕像被重复了四次，有两具被埋在沙子里，第三具被推翻成了碎片，而第四具仍能看清这个旧世界最伟大的人的面容。早在记录在史的第一征服者希腊和罗马崛起之前，他便已成就了埃及的辉煌、亚洲的恐怖，这对当时的世界来说，其势力定如罗马帝国一样强大。
"The chief thought," says Dean Stanley, "that strikes one at Ipsambul, and elsewhere, is the rapidity of transition in Egyptian worship from the sublime to the ridiculous. The gods alternate between the majesty of antediluvian angels and the grotesqueness of pre-Adamite monsters. By what strange contradiction could the same sculptors and worshippers have conceived the grave and awful forms of Ammon? and Osiris? and the ludicrous images of gods in all shapes 'in the heavens and in the earth, and in the waters under the earth,' with heads of hawk, and crocodile, and jackal, and ape? What must have been the mind and muscle of a nation who could worship, as at Thebes, in the assemblage of hundreds of colossal Pashts—the sacred cats?"
迪安.斯坦利说道：“酋长认为对伊卜森布和其他地方来说，最让人震惊的是埃及人的崇拜从崇高到荒谬的转变是如此之快。众神时而威严如上古时代的天使，时而怪诞如亚当时代的怪物。究竟是怎样奇怪的矛盾，能够使得同样的雕刻家和崇拜者们构思出这种庄严而可怕的亚扪人的形象？还有地狱判官的形象？还有天上、地上和地下水里的各种各样长着鹰头、鳄鱼头、豺狼头和猿猴头的滑稽可笑的神的形象？一个民族能像在底比斯那样，崇拜数以百计的庞大的普什——神圣的猫，他们的思想和力量是什么呢？”
