The Power and Protection of Ancient Egypt
- Imagine being the six-year-old Pharaoh Pepi II, with the power to command armies and make laws in ancient Egypt.
- Your kingdom, surrounded by natural barriers, is protected by the Great River, known as the Nile, and the desert.
- The limestone cliffs and the Delta marshland further safeguard your kingdom against invaders.
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日本語訳を! 1-(1)
お願いします。 Imagine you are the king of Egypt. Strut about a bit, you can. After all, you're the supreme ruler―the Pharaoh, the Great One. You command armies. If you say fight, they fight to the death. You have thousands of servants―a few just to fan you with ostrich feathers when you're feeling a tad overheated. Your brothers and sisters, parents, teachers, and friends have to do what you order. YOU have inherited the right to make laws and dole out punishments. They had better behave. When you walk by, people fall to their knees and press their noses into the dirt. Some tremble when you pass―who knows what you might say to the gods the next time you speak to them? The crops grow because you say so. The Great River flows because you convince the gods it must. Now imagine wielding all that power when you are only six years old. That's how old you would be if you were the Pharaoh Pepi II in Egypt 4,000 years ago. If you were Pepi II, your kingdom would have looked a lot like the barren, red landscape of Mars if it weren't for one thing―the Great River, a river we now call the Nile. Flowing north, the Nile cuts throtgh the deshret, or the red land. Limestone cliffs rise above the river like castle walls. The ancient Egyptians said the gods put those cliffs there to protect them. In fact, your entire kingdom is surrounded by natural barriers that protect it. To the east and west, the desert keeps out invaders. To the north, before the Nile dumps into the sea, it branches out into a triangle of marshland we call the Delta (it would be hard for your enemies to march through a swamp). And to the south the Nile protects your kingdom again, this time with a series of rocky rapids called the Cataracts.
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Imagine you are the king of Egypt. 自分がエジプト王だと想像してください。 Strut about a bit, you can.少しふんぞり返って歩く——そうしてもいいですよ。 After all, you're the supreme ruler―the Pharaoh, the Great One.何といっても、あなたは至高の支配者、偉大なるファラオなのですから。 You command armies. If you say fight, they fight to the death.あなたは軍の指揮官です。あなたが軍に戦えと言えば、彼らは死ぬまで戦います。 You have thousands of servants―a few just to fan you with ostrich feathers when you're feeling a tad overheated.召使いは何千人もいます。ちょっと暑いなと思えば、ダチョウの羽で扇ぐ専用の召使いが数名います。 Your brothers and sisters, parents, teachers, and friends have to do what you order. あなたの兄弟姉妹、両親、教師、友人といえども、あなたが命じたことをしなければなりません。 YOU have inherited the right to make laws and dole out punishments. 法律を作り、処罰を与える権利は、あなたが先王から継承しているわけですから。 They had better behave. 彼らだって（あなたの前では）いい子にしてないと怖いのです。 When you walk by, people fall to their knees and press their noses into the dirt.あなたが歩いて行くと、人々はひざまずいて、鼻を地面に埋め込むように押しつけます。 Some tremble when you pass―who knows what you might say to the gods the next time you speak to them? 震える者たちもいます——あなたが次に神々に話しかける時、何があなたの口から出てくるか、誰も知らないからです。 The crops grow because you say so. 穀物が育つのは、あなたがそう言うからです。 The Great River flows because you convince the gods it must.大いなる河が流れるのは、あなたが神々をそのように説き伏せるからです。 Now imagine wielding all that power when you are only six years old.さあ想像してみて下さい——あなたがわずか６歳でこうしたすべての権力を揮うところを。 That's how old you would be if you were the Pharaoh Pepi II in Egypt 4,000 years ago.それがまさに、もしあなたが４千年前のエジプトのペピ２世だったとしたら、あなたが何歳であったかという答えなのです。 If you were Pepi II, your kingdom would have looked a lot like the barren, red landscape of Mars if it weren't for one thing―the Great River, a river we now call the Nile. もしあなたがペピ２世だったとしたら、あなたの王国は、火星の不毛の赤茶けた国土にとてもよく似ていたでしょう。でも１つ違いがありました。あなたの王国には大いなる河——今、ナイルと呼ばれている河があります。 Flowing north, the Nile cuts through the desert, or the red land. ナイルは砂漠のような赤い大地を切り裂くように北に流れています。 Limestone cliffs rise above the river like castle walls. 石灰岩の崖が河の両岸に城壁のようにそびえています。 The ancient Egyptians said the gods put those cliffs there to protect them. 古代エジプト人は、神々が、彼らエジプト人を守るために、その崖を創ったと言っていました。 In fact, your entire kingdom is surrounded by natural barriers that protect it.実際、あなたの王国全体が、王国を守る自然の障壁に囲まれていました。 To the east and west, the desert keeps out invaders. 東と西には砂漠があり、侵入者を寄せ付けません。 To the north, before the Nile dumps into the sea, it branches out into a triangle of marshland we call the Delta (it would be hard for your enemies to march through a swamp). 北では、ナイルが海に注ぐ少し前のところで枝分かれし、今ではデルタ地帯と呼ばれている三角形の沼沢地を形成しています。（敵がこの沼地を行進するのは難しいでしょう。） And to the south the Nile protects your kingdom again, this time with a series of rocky rapids called the Cataracts.そして南では、ここでもまたナイルがあなたの王国を守ってくれています。今度は、瀑布と呼ばれる、岩盤を流れ落ちる幾つもの連続した急流によってです。
関連するQ&A
- 日本語訳を! 1-(2)
お願いします。 Without the Nile you wouldn't have much of a kingdom to rule. Strutting might seem a bit silly. Egypt would be home to nothing more than a few wandering bands of nomads passing through the red land, dusty and dragging from the relentless heat, in search of the rare oasis. The Nile, however, the glorious Nile, brought a narrow band of life to Egypt. It carried rich, black dirt and spread it over the floodplains, creating fields for the Egyptians to plant their seeds. The Egyptians called it khemet―the black land. The change from red land to black land was so abrupt you could straddle the border, standing with one foot in red earth and the other in black. The ancient Egyptians knew tha without the Great River they would have no villages, no fields of wheat, and no cattle. To them the water was sacred. They believed it flowed from paradise and could heal the sick. They wrote songs to the Nike―praising its life-giving force. The Hymn to the Nile began "Hail to thee O, Nile!" and praised the Great River for coming "to give life to Egypt." It may seem as if the ancients got carried away with their praise when they sang, "If you cease your toil and your work, then all that exists is in anguish." But if the Nile did "cease its toil," the people would starve. Maybe they weren't so carried away after all.
- ベストアンサー
- 英語
- 日本語訳を! 5-(1)
番号で分けているのでお願いします。 (1) The ancient Egyptians had a god for everything. That palm tree set back from the Nile sprouting on the rise behind your cousin's house? It had a god. The make-up your father applied from his palette in the morning? It had a god, too. More than 2,000 names of gods have been found written in limestone, on papyrus, and scratched on mud-brick walls. Some gods were powerful and worshipped by many, and some were wispy spirits known to just a few. There were gods whose spirits lived inside real things, such as the Nile, the sun , the sky, and the earth. And there were gods for protection against dangers, such as the bites of crocodiles, scorpions, and snakes. There were gods who stood for learning―the art of music and medicine; and there were gods who stood for the learned―the scribes and the architects. You name it, the Egyptians had a god for it. (2) There were good gods and bad gods, and fierce gods to protect you from the bad gods. There were gods for the living and gods for the dead. Some gods were human, some were animal, and some were a little of both. The bulls of one breed were so sacred that they lived like kings, and when they died the Egyptians mummified them, just like they would a pharaoh. They covered the bulls in jewels and placed them in coffins carved out of solid blocks of granite each weighing 80 tons. These sacred bulls even had their own cemeteries. At a burial site at Saqqara archaeologists have found 24 bulls, each in an elaborately carved coffin. (3) The most important god in Egypt was the sun god. The Egyptians pictured the sun god pushing the sun across the sky just as the scarab beetles pushed tiny dirt balls across the ground. Every morning the Egyptians were grateful when the sun was born again like the tiny scarab eggs hatching in the dirt ball. And every evening when the sun set, they worried that an evil snake would swallow the sun as it passed through the Underworld.
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- 日本語訳で困っています。
以下の文章がものすごく難しくて、長いしどう訳せばいいかわかりません。 だれか教えてください。お願いします。 (1)After spending a period of time abroad, you may have to prepare yourself for a period of re-adjustment when you return home. (2)Simply because, if you have had a full experience living and learning overseas, you are likely to have changed, so the place you return to may itself appear to have changed, as indeed it might have. (3)But as you try to settle back into your former routine, you may recognize that your overseas experience has changed some or many of your ways of doing things, even what it means to “be yourself”. (4)But this intellectual and personal growth means that you can expect a period of difficulty in adjusting to the new environment at home.
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- 英語
- 日本語訳を! 7-(2)
お願いします。 (5) When the scribe out your name, you are afraid you heard wrong. Your knees feel a little weak. You've never left your village before. What will the world be like in the north across the Nile from the capital? (6) You rush home to pack your things. While piling your clothing in a square and tying it into a bundle, you suddenly feel too old for your mother's kisses. She's weeping behind you. But when you turn you see the pride in her eyes. Maybe she is thinking that if you help build the king's pathway to the heavens you will get to journey to the afterlife, too. (7) The barge is waiting by the dock. You and several others from the village hurry to board. The boat is already loaded with young men from villages even farther south. As the river currents carry you swiftly northward, you watch your village grow smaller and smaller until you aren't sure if you can see it. The ship is noisy with bragging men who have worked many flood seasons at Giza. Their voices fade, because suddenly you wish you were back in your village, watching your mother weave reed sandals, and not on a barge among men you don't know. (8) What was it like for young people who worked on the pyramids of King Khufu and the pyramids of his sons? To come from small farming villages, float up the Nile to the Giza Plateau and live in a barracks town of thousands? As they approached Giza, the Great Pyramid must have appeared to thrust out of the plateau as if it would pierce the sky. The monument was so massive that it took more than 4,000 years for humans to build anything taller. Until the Eiffel Tower was built in Paris in 1889, the Great Pyramid was the tallest building on earth. What would it have felt like to a simple Egyptian peasant to be part of such a huge project? How would you have felt that first day at Giza?
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- 日本語訳を! 1-(6)
お願いします。 Pepi II wrote that he knew Harkhuf spent day and night with the caravan "doing that which thy lord desires, praises and commands." Not bad to have everyone running around trying to please you when you are barely nine. "Thy lord" has a nice ring to it, too. Despite all his power, Pepi II was still a young boy after all, and it was impossible for him to keep the excitement out of his letter. He had learned that Harkhuf was bringing home someone from the fabulous race of short people called pygmies. The talents of this particular dancing pygmy were so amazing that he was said to perform "the dance of the gods." Imagine waiting for someone that entertaining to arrive. Pepi II was having a little trouble waiting. "Come north to the Palace at once! Drop everything―hurry and bring that pygmy you have brought, alive, happy and well, for the divine dances, to gladden the heart, to delight the heart of the king who lives for ever!" (There's another kingly bonus―living forever.) Pepi II wanted to be sure the dancing pygmy arrived unharmed. He ordered: get trusty men to stand around him on the gangplank―don't let him fall in the water! When he goes to bed at night,get trusty men to lie all round him in his hammock. Inspect him ten times a night! My majesty longs to see this pygmy more than all the treasure of Sinai and Punt!
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- 日本語訳を! 1-(7)
お願いします。 Despite Harkhuf's major expeditions and all the riches he and other traders brought back to Egypt―from Nubia with all its gold, Sinai with all its turquoise, and Punt with all its incense―it was this dancing pygmy that captured the heart of Pepi II. And the letter written by the boy-king remained so important to Harkhuf that at he end of his days he chose to record it on his tomb. If you were the supreme ruler of Egypt 4,000 years ago, what kinds of letters would you write? What songs would you sing to the Nile? Think about it while your servants fan you with ostrich feathers. But you might want to be careful how you order your teachers around.
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うまく日本語訳ができません。だれか教えてください。お願いします。 (1)When you return to your home country after a long period abroad it is rather normal to need time to re-adjust to the country you call home. (2)Education is all about going to another country and living there for long periods of time. (3)It takes about the same amount of time to adjust to your own country as a foreign country when you have been abroad for a long time. (4)It might be a good idea to search out people who are about to spend time abroad if you want to maintain your contact with the international scene. (5)Spending time abroad is a skill, as you learn about different cultures and also how to interact with different people, and you should use this skill wisely. 問題は以上です。よろしくお願いします。
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- 日本語訳を! 8-(3)
お願いします。 (8) When the last pharaoh of the Old Kingdom, Pepi II, finally died in his 90s, Egypt was a country divided into feeble kingdoms festering from civil wars. The First Intermediate Period was bathed in blood. The Greek historian Herodotus writes about a First Intermediate queen, royal murders, and revenge. Determined to avenge her brother's death, the queen "devised a cunning scheme.... She constructed a spacious underground chamber.... Inviting to a banquet those Egyptians whom she knew to have had a chief share in the murder of her brother, she suddenly, as they were feasting, let the river in upon them, by means of a secret duct of large size." The scheming murderers drowned while the queen (a scheming murderess herself) escaped through a secret passageway. (9) The kings who followed Pepi II never lasted long. None during the First Intermediate Period had the strength to pull Egypt back together again. Egypt entered a dark age. Later, literature would paint a bleak picture of this trough between two times of glory. Texts written in the Middle Kingdom about the chaos and misery have depressing titles, such as Dialogue Between a Man Tired of Lifd and His Ba. The stories ere sometimes as gloomy as the titles. In the Dialogue the miserable character claims, "my name reeks, more than the smell of bird-droppings on summer days." He writes that "Mercy has perished" and that "hearts are selfish, and every man is stealing his fellow's belongings." Later Middle Kingdom literature moans the loss of order during the First Intermediate Period; it groans at the unrest. It claims the Nile itself stopped flowing, and the sun lost its brilliance.
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- 日本語訳を! 1-(3)
お願いします。 Life in Egypt revolved around the Great River. Our seasons come and go, marked by weather changes, but not so in Egypt, where the sun always shines. In Egypt the seasoms were marked by changes in the Nile. The first of the three seasons began in July. Egyptians called it akhet. During akhet, heavy rain in Ethiopia poured down from the highlands, swelling streams that fed the Nile. The banks of the Nile overflowed. Flooding may not sound like a good thing, but to the Egyptians it was a very good thing. Those floods left behind that black earth for planting. During the floods, farmlands were covered with water. Everyone uneasily watched the water rise. Would there be enough water? Would the Nile bring enough of that rich, black earth for farmers to plant their seeds? Or would there be too much water? Would whole villages be washed away? It was a delicate balance. If you were the supreme ruler, it would be your job to work it out with the gods so that things went well. You worked with Hapi, the god of the Great River, and more importantly, with the god in charge of the floods, the one with the ram's head―Khnemu. It was your job to be sure there was ma'at, or balance―not too much, not too little. The Egyptians watched the flood levels obsessively. They measured the water and recorded it. They compared their measurements to the good years. They compared their measurements to the bad years. Everywhere you went, people would have had an opinion on this year's flood level. People talked in the market place. People talked along the roads, over dinner, while washing clothes at the riverbank. Would this be a good year? Would the granaries be full? Or would this be a bad year? Would they suffer the anguish they sang about in The Hymn to the Nile?
- ベストアンサー
- 英語
- 日本語訳を! 1-(5)
お願いします。 Most Egyptians centered their lives around the Nile, but a few explored the countries surrounding Egypt. When Pepi II was nearly nine years old, he wrote to a man who had started his career when he was a young boy just like Pepi II. The man's name was Harkhuf. Harkhuf came from a family of explorers and had traveled with his father before making journeys on his own. Harkhuf led donkey caravans south across the desert to explore inner Africa. The details of Harkhuf's journeys are engraved just to the right of the entrance to his tomb located near the First Cataract of the Nile in Aswan. The long inscription begins high overhead on a chalkboard-sized area of the wall and continues down to waist level. Harkhuf begins his inscription with a little bragging about how he behaved in life. "I was excellent," he says, and goes on to tell of how his family loved and praised him. He writes about returning with 300 donkeys loaded with gifts for the Pharaoh. How would you like someone bringing you 300 donkeys loaded down with gifts, O Great One? Clearly, Harkhuf is proud of a letter written to him by the boy-king Pepi II. The letter would have turned to dust long ago if Harkhuf hadn't been so honored by it that he carved it in stone. The letter from Pepi II is addressed to Harkhuf, calling him the chief of the desert rangers, the caravan conductor, and is dated:"Royal seal, year 2, third month of the first season, day 15." This shows us that Pepi II wrote to Harkhuf toward the end of the flood season in the second year of his reign, about 2276 BCE. The letter has tones of the royal-ness Pepi II must have been developing even at his young age, but it also shows that when you're only eight years old, it's hard to escape being a kid―even if you are a supreme ruler.
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長い文章なのですが、ありがとうございます。