If we are willing to stay for a period of time in the written records produced in the Shang Dynasty, that is, around 1600 BC-around 1046 BC, we will find that Oracle Bone Inscriptions's words engraved on tortoise shells and animal bones actually recorded something directly and concisely.
At noon, at the foot of the mountain, only five brothers (friends) and talents (middle) of Shang Dynasty (different), Wang Yi (tin), [broom] (bedroom) Xiao [arrow] were (obtained).
According to records, Di Xin gave the hunted rhinoceros to Zai Feng.
After the Shang Dynasty, China society entered the Western Zhou Dynasty, and the writing method changed from being engraved on tortoise shells and animal bones to being engraved on bamboo slips. In terms of the difficulty and hardness of materials, bamboo slips are easier and softer than tortoise shells or animal bones. Therefore, the Western Zhou Dynasty, that is, from 65438 BC to 0046 BC, is easier to record than the Shang Dynasty, but only records some people and things that must be recorded.
Listening to the Book of Songs, the most representative written records are from the Western Zhou Dynasty to the mid-Spring and Autumn Period, that is, from BC 1046 to around 500 BC.
China's earliest poems. It collected 305 poems in about 500 years from the early Western Zhou Dynasty to the mid-Spring and Autumn Period. The pre-Qin dynasty was called "Poetry", or the integer was called "Poetry 300". In the Western Han Dynasty, it was regarded as a Confucian classic, originally known as the Book of Songs, which has been in use ever since. The Book of Songs is generally defined in this way, with 300 poems. With our current understanding of the word "poetry", we will automatically recognize that The Book of Songs is a collection of poems and a literary work. Based on this, we will think that the Book of Songs is a literary work created collectively by our ancestors from the Western Zhou Dynasty to the mid-Spring and Autumn Period.
The Western Han Dynasty, which was founded in 202 BC and perished in 8 AD, is the dynasty closest to the Book of Songs in China history. The Western Han Dynasty honored the Book of Songs as a Confucian classic, and the name of the Book of Songs came into being. Obviously, in the Western Han Dynasty, the key word of The Book of Songs is "Jing", not "Poetry". At that time, people thought that 300 Poems was actually a person's code of conduct.
Let's take Guo Feng Nan Zhou Goose as an example.
Three Hundred Poems is divided into three parts: abundance, elegance and praise. "Wind" is a ballad of Zhou Dynasty. Elegant music is the official music of Zhou people, which is divided into harmony and elegance. Ode is a musical song used for sacrificial rites in Zhou and noble ancestral temples, which is divided into ode to, and ode to Shang. Gomba in Nan Zhou, Guo Feng is a folk song, which records the appearance and performance of plantain.
Pick slugs, pick them with fine words. Pick slugs, fine print.
Select slugs and make a short comment. Pick slugs and smooth them with fine print.
Pick slugs and talk about them. Pick and choose, say short words.
This poem records the scene of people picking bananas during the period when The Book of Songs came into being.
Mr. Chen Zizhan, a literary historian and professor of the Chinese Department of Fudan University, commented in his book The Book of Songs: "jiaozi in China is a prose poem, which describes such a kind of women's slight labor before getting together in the car. Don't say anything big, just write a small thing. Easy work, relaxed mood, relaxed tone. It seems that there is a kind of simple beauty of words, which has the beauty of harmonious intonation when read. The author should have a kind of fun. " This kind of comment on the Book of Songs has existed since ancient times, and this statement is not without it in ancient times. Fang Yurun's interpretation of "abandoned dumplings" in his Primitive Book of Songs in the Qing Dynasty is similar to Mr. Chen Zizhan's "Suddenly listening to the women of the Tian family, in twos and threes, corresponding to the five-five, plain wilderness songs, beautiful wind and lingering sound."
It can be seen that "300 Poems" produced from the Western Zhou Dynasty to the mid-Spring and Autumn Period is only a simple record of the life scenes of the ancients. With the passage of time, ancient sages edited and annotated The Book of Songs again and again. In this process, the status of The Book of Songs as a "classic" was gradually denied, and its educational function was gradually denied. After 3000 years, it is difficult for us to understand the Book of Songs.
Time is long and life is short. With the change of generations, we misinterpret the origin of words.
2. Take the book of death or the book of death as an example.
The Egyptians invented papyrus 5,500 years ago, and the raw material for papermaking is sedge, a plant in the Nile valley. Due to the means of writing, the ancient Egyptian literature left on the papyrus is very rich, among which "The Book of the Dead" or "The Book of the Dead" is the earlier writing on the papyrus that we can read so far.
It is said that it is written on papyrus, but actually more space is for painting.
The book of death in the British Museum has a more exact name, "Yani's book of death". This Yani lived in the 19 dynasty of the new kingdom of ancient Egypt. This cultural relic was found in the ancient tomb on the west bank of Luxor in the middle reaches of Nile River in 1887. Among many papyrus books, Mr. Yani's is the best preserved, and today it really looks like the most outstanding work in ancient Egyptian art.
Is it the most outstanding work of art that sent this Mr Yani to the "Osiris Kingdom" to make him immortal? I don't know. We only know that the funerary objects and the paintings in Mr. Yani's tomb now preserved in the British Museum are indeed masterpieces of art. The book of the dead has a total of *** 10470 paintings. If they are spliced together, the total length can reach 78 feet. Of course, space is not an important factor to put it in an eternal artistic position, but it is its value to express the meaning of the picture.
Papyrus is divided into two parts. The first part outlines the scene of the underworld, with lines and colors full of praise for the gods of the underworld; The second part, with Mr. Yani as the protagonist, records in detail the necessary procedures and necessary spells for obtaining eternal life. Among them, Yani's trial in the country of the deceased, that is, judging how much good and evil he did before his death, is the most wonderful part of the whole picture. Although it has been more than 100 years since the painting was completed and excavated from the ground, the picture of Osiris, the god of the underworld, presiding over measuring the weight of the dead heart to determine whether Mr. Yani can live forever is still vivid!
Compared with the gorgeous picture, the text of the book of death is concise and direct.
"Eat, drink, and be merry, because sooner or later we will all die", much like a sentence in our chicken soup today. The Nile valley is rich in land, but the average life expectancy of ancient Egyptians is only 35 years old. The ancient Egyptians needed such chicken soup to motivate themselves.
More, it is "Go back, you snake!" It is said that this is a very useful spell to prevent being hurt by poisonous snakes.
Compared with Oracle Bone Inscriptions and bamboo slips, writing on papyrus is easier. However, the ancient Egyptians did not express their feelings or comments in detail. As the hard-to-decipher "gobbledygook" is gradually read, we find that the words written on papyrus are all records of the living conditions and psychological state of ancient Egyptians.
3. Take the Rosetta Monument as an example.
Please remember a book, The Scholar of the Tomb of the Gods, written by Germany Silam and translated by Mr. Liu Naiyuan.
200 1 after reading this beautiful book about archaeology as a detective novel, I am full of interest in museums and the remains of human activities displayed in museums.
This book uses a chapter to tell the story of champollion.
Champollion, the son of a bookseller, has no interest in business. He is only willing to use his extraordinary language talent to explore the past of the ancients.
1799, when the French built a military fortress in Rosetta, they dug a black marble slab from the ground. An officer instinctively thought it was a treasure and kept it safe. 18 At the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2009, Britain was still an empire. They took Egypt from the French in 180 1 year. The defeated French tried to smuggle black marble back to France when they lost to Egypt, but they were intercepted by the British. The British who became the owner of the black marble stone tablet also thought the stone tablet was a treasure. However, the level of the treasure depends on what is written in the tortuous words on the stone tablet. Although scholars have judged that the ancients said the same thing on the stone tablets in Egyptian holy sites, Egyptian secular characters and ancient Greek characters, what was it? I've looked all over England, but I can't find anyone who can read.
The British must find the Frenchman champollion, who is a young scholar who knows Greek and Latin and has studied six oriental languages, including Egyptian.
From 1822 to 1824, it took champollion three years to finally solve the secret on the black marble tablet: the orthodox heir to the Egyptian throne, the devout believer of God, the reconstructor of the Egyptian kingdom and the defender of human civilization are invincible ... However, the greater significance of champollion's deciphering the black marble inscription lies in the future. Because the stone tablet was excavated in Rosetta area, later, we called this black marble stone tablet Rosetta Stone Tablet.
Now, let's take a look at what is engraved on this Rosetta stone.
The Rosetta Monument engraved with 14 19 hieroglyphs and 486 Greek characters was written from top to bottom in Egyptian hieroglyphs (also known as sacred sites, representing the words dedicated to the gods), Egyptian cursive scripts (also known as secular scripts, which were used by Egyptian civilians at that time) and ancient Greek characters, which were the same imperial edict:
The orthodox heir to the Egyptian throne, a devout believer of God, a reconstructor of the Egyptian kingdom and a defender of human civilization, an invincible master who has made Egypt prosperous for 30 years, the son of Rashin, the eternal son of Puta God, and King Toromi, in the fourth month of Zandi Kosti in the ninth year of his reign, in order to encourage and praise those who decided to serve God forever, according to Egyptian customNo. 18 Mekhir, He issued imperial edicts ... He was kind to all the temples and people who lived in them. He donated his own things-these things replaced the taxes of temples, he brought prosperity to Egypt, and donated to build temples and all his other generous gifts. He reduced all kinds of exorbitant taxes so that his subjects could live a richer life during his reign. He forgave the debts of the poor in the kingdom. He pardoned those guilty. He claimed that the gods should continue to enjoy the sacrifices in the temple, just as they did in his father's time. ...
We read records.
4. Take code of hammurabi as an example.
Ancient Egypt, China, India and Babylon are recognized as four ancient civilizations in the world. On the one hand, this cognition is a foregone conclusion; On the other hand, a question has been lingering in Assyrian scholars' minds: Why was Iran not included in the ranks of ancient civilizations?
Scholars' doubts are not unreasonable. Iran's civilization is equally long and splendid, and written materials appeared as early as around 3000 BC. They write cuneiform characters on stone tablets, and the language used is Elamite.
190 1 65438+February, a joint archaeological team composed of French and Iranians started excavation in the former site of an ancient city named Susa in southwest Iran. The archaeological discoveries in the museum are dazzling; The process of archaeological discovery is very lonely and unbearable. However, archaeologists know that what they are engaged in is a job of draining gold from sand, and any seemingly boring day may give them a big surprise. The hard work of this joint archaeological team was greatly rewarded. One day, they found a piece of black basalt. Surprised, in the next few days, they continued to dig hard and found two pieces of black basalt. The joint archaeological team pieced together three pieces of black basalt, and an oval columnar stone pillar appeared in front of them. The stone pillar is very high, two and a half meters. Above it, there are two relief figures: one is sitting with a short stick in his right hand; The other stood, his hands arched, as if he were in church. The lower part of the stone pillar is engraved with words such as arrows or nails.
The ancient two-river basin, also known as Mesopotamia (its Greek root means "the land between the two rivers"), generally refers to the area between the Tigris River and the Euphrates River in West Asia, and most of this area is located in today's Iraq. The two river basins are known as the "cradle of human civilization". As early as around 3200 BC, the oldest writing in the world-cuneiform was born.
When we found this group of stone pillars, we were able to read the cuneiform characters of ancient Chinese characters in the two river basins. Soon, this archaeological discovery was confirmed as code of hammurabi, which was published by carving on black basalt. The time was about 1792 BC to 1750 BC, and the publisher was the late reign of King Hammurabi of Babylon.
Since code of hammurabi is the spokesman of the civilization in the two river basins, why was discovered in a place called Susa in Iran today? History is so ruthless. We can now sum up a past event in two sentences, which is actually full of unspeakable blood and tears: At the end of 12 BC, Elam, a neighboring country, invaded the two river basins from the east, and the winner took the code of hammurabi stone tablet as a trophy and looted it back to his capital Susa. This scene will repeat itself in 3000 years. 190 1 year, France transported the code of hammurabi excavated in Susa to France with its own national strength. Now we can see it in the Louvre in Paris. Besides Mona Lisa, Goddess of Victory and Venus, code of hammurabi is the most popular exhibit in the Louvre.
So, what are those cuneiform words on the stone tablet saying? Let's look at the relief on the top of the stone tablet first.
The relief depicts the sun god Chamakh giving Hammurabi a rope ring and a wooden stick. Among them, ropes and wooden sticks are traditional measuring tools in the two river basins, symbolizing law and justice. Chamakh sat on the throne with his feet on the pedestal. The pedestal consists of three rows of fish scales, which are used to represent the mountains and tombs in the artistic tradition of the two river basins. Because the zagros mountains in Iran is located in the east of the two river basins, Chamak's mountain-stepping method is used to show the rising of the sun. Chamak's left shoulder and right shoulder emit two clusters of flames, which is also a sign to identify the sun god. In addition, Chamak's spiral hat and robes decorated with several horizontal folds are also unique costumes of the gods in the two river basins, which are used to show the difference between man and god in works of art.
In the relief, Hammurabi stands in front of Chamakh, with his left hand bent 90 degrees horizontally, his right arm bent, his elbow on his left forearm, and the palm of his right hand reaching the height of his mouth. This posture is a common prayer posture in the works of art in the two river basins. Judging from the clothing, Hammurabi wears a round hat and a Baotou, and the clothes are decorated with vertical pleats, which is obviously different from Chamakh's robes.
In addition, judging from the size of the characters, Chamakh's height after sitting down is almost the same as that of Hammurabi. We can imagine that Chamakh will be much taller than Hammurabi. It is a common technique to highlight the difference between god and man through size.
Now, let's see what the cuneiform on the stone tablet actually says.
Code of hammurabi uses Akkadian (the oldest Semitic language, which belongs to the Semitic family with Hebrew and Arabic) and is carved on stone tablets in cuneiform. The full text is divided into three parts: preface, code clauses and postscript.
The code covers the following main aspects:
(1) judicial procedures: such as perjury and "He Shen" trial;
(2) Criminal offences: theft, robbery, personal attack and injury, sexual assault;
(3) Marriage and family: conclusion of marriage, disposal, inheritance and adoption of women's property;
(4) Economic activities: slave trade and related matters, agriculture and irrigation, mortgage, loan, sale and lease of real estate, equipment lease and labor employment, obligations of tenants and shepherds, etc.
Every clause in the Code follows a unified format, that is, a conditional sentence (usually translated as an if-guided clause in English) is used to describe the specific performance of negligence or crime, and then the corresponding punishment is stipulated. The sentence pattern of "if … then ……" can be used in Chinese translation.
If a cow kills a Freeman while crossing the road, there is no need to file a lawsuit.
25 1: If a free man's cow touched a person, the owner has been told that his cow touched a person, but the owner did not blunt his horn or control the cow well, resulting in the cow killing a free man, then the owner of the cow should pay 30 shekels of silver (about 225 grams).
Due to some damage on the surface of the stone tablet, it is impossible to confirm the exact number of items. It is generally believed that the number of retained clauses is 282, and the total number of original clauses does not exceed 300. In the preface, Hammurabi stated his great achievements and how he became the darling of the gods. He also explained the origin of legislation, that is, under the command of Marduk (the head of the gods), to provide the people with correct action guidance to ensure their integrity. In the last postscript, he encouraged future generations to obey the law and called on the gods to curse and punish those who violated the law.
There is no doubt that there is a cuneiform code on the black basalt. However, it seems that the academic circles who study the civilization of the two river basins have been arguing about whether code of hammurabi has practical functions. In other words, in the judicial practice of ancient Babylonian society, did you refer to the relevant provisions of the code of hammurabi as the basis for the actual judgment? It's none of our business. What we care about is, when human civilization enters the written language, what are they recording?
If a cow kills a free man while crossing the road, there is no need to file a lawsuit.
A plain letter, that's all.