双语+MP3|美国学生艺术史62 土饼宫殿和神庙

 
一般人都知道，出国旅游的人都要带纪念品回国。同样道理，国家之间出访也会这样做。各个国家都从埃及把方尖碑运出来，搬进自己的国家。有些是人家当作纪念品赠送的，有些是花钱买的，也有是从埃及偷出来的。美国纽约的中央公园里有一座，英国伦敦的泰晤士河畔也有一座。这两座方尖碑被称作“克娄巴特拉针”。尽管它们早在埃及女王克娄巴特拉诞生之前就已经造成，但它们看起来更像是巨型铅笔而不像针。巴黎某个美丽的广场中心有一座，而罗马却有许多座。 
62 MUD PIE PALACES AND TEMPLES土饼宫殿和神庙
 
IN THE Bible, Chaldeans means the wise men and priests of what you and I call the Two River Country. They were men of Chaldea, which was one of the countries in the Two River Country along with Assyria and Babylonia. Assyria was a little farther north than Babylonia and Chaldea, but all three countries were very much alike and sometimes all three were under one king. 
The Two River Country was watered by a network of canals between the Two Rivers and so was very fertile. The finest crops in all the world grew there and many large cities were built on the plains. Nowadays these plains are dry and desert-like, for the canals have not been taken care of and without water the crops fail to grow. On the plains one can now see big mounds or low hills where once the palaces and cities stood. These are all that is left of the handsome buildings of this ancient land, and they crumbled into dust because they were made of mud, as I told you once before. Imagine a king’s palace made of mud—mud baked in the sun like a mud pie! But you remember, do you not, that these Two River people covered their mud walls with glazed tiles and slabs of stone? The tiles were bright colored like bathroom tiles and the slabs of stone were carved in low relief so that even a mud palace became a handsome building. 
But with only mud bricks the Two River builders were handicapped. They could not make mud-brick houses more than one story high. The houses would have tumbled down had they been higher. The walls were not strong enough to hold a second story. As a one-story house would not look very palace-like, when these people built a palace they first made a hill with a flat top or platform of dried mud and placed the palace on that. The palace then seemed much higher. 
The sides of the platform were very steep—almost, if not quite, straight up and down. So to reach the top of the platform a slanting roadway called a ramp was built against its side. 
As mud walls were so crumbly, the builders had to make their palace walls very, very thick. Some were as much as twenty feet thick. The sun was very hot in that part of the world and these thick walls helped to keep out the heat. Further to keep out the heat, the Two River people made their palaces without windows, so the rooms were lighted only by lamps. 
We usually think of palace rooms as large and spacious, but the rooms in the Two River mud palaces were very small. They had to be because of the lack of stone and of wooden beams long enough to stretch across a wide space. In a palace, however, the builders made up for the smallness of the rooms by having a great number. 
The temples which the priests built were made of mud bricks, too, but the one single platform for a foundation was not enough, so they built several, one on top of another. This gave the effect of a terraced pyramid, as each platform was set back from the one below it. In New York and some other cities to-day, architects are again planning tall buildings in this ancient way—the stories stepped back, as we call it. 
You remember the Bible story of the flood—how the Babylonians built a tower called the Tower of Babel so that in case of another flood the people could climb to the top and escape drowning? Well, the Tower of Babel was not built straight up and down. It was a stepped pyramid such as I have described. It was like a set of blocks of different sizes piled one on top of another, each one a little smaller than the one below. Each was reached from the other by a ramp. On the topmost and smallest platform was placed the temple or shrine for the idol. 
 
No.62-1　ASSYRIAN TEMPLE: RESTORATION （亚述神庙复原） 
The Tower of Babel was supposed to have had seven giant steps or terraces. Seven was a magic number. Each step was in honor of one of the heavenly bodies. The topmost terrace, in honor of the sun, was covered with gold. The next, in honor of the moon, was covered with silver. Those below, in honor of each of the five planets, were painted in different colors. 
The Chaldeans were the first to make a study of the stars and their movements in the sky, and they gave many of the stars names which we still use. We call such people astronomers. The Chaldean astronomers used the temple on top of these terraced pyramids or towers for an observatory—that is, a place from which to observe the heavenly bodies. That is why the Chaldeans came to be known as the wise men of the Two River Country. 
There is an old saying that “necessity is the mother of invention.” That means if you haven’t what you need, you will invent something else to take its place. It was necessity that made the Assyrians invent one of the most important ways of building that we use to-day. This way of building is what is called the Principle of the Arch. 
The Assyrians had no stones long enough to stretch from one side to the other of a large room to form the ceiling, so they had to invent a way of covering a room or a doorway with small pieces of stone or bricks. You might call an open doorway an arch, but one piece of stone or wood laid across an opening does not make an arch. An arch must be made of several pieces. 
Now, you can’t cement bricks or small stones together strongly enough to make them into one piece that will stretch from wall to wall and not fall. 
 
No.62-2 
But if you arrange the stones in a certain way, they will not fall. This is the way, with the stones set in a curve or half circle and this is an arch. 
 
No.62-3 
By this simple arrangement, the stones are made to stay in place, not because they are stuck together, for they will stay in place whether cemented or not, but because each stone, pressing downward, trying to fall through, presses against the stones at each side and they are all so tightly jammed together that none can squeeze through and fall. The heavier the weight on top of the arch, the more firmly are the stones held in place, provided there is no way for them to push over the side wall and widen the space. 
Try to hold half a dozen upright books in your hands by squeezing them together. If you can squeeze them tight enough, they’ll not slip, but release your pressure and they fall. So to prevent the stones of an arch from slipping, the side walls of arches were made very heavy and thick. 
Not only doorways but whole rooms could be covered in this same way. When a room was covered, the arch became what was called a barrel vault, as the ceiling of such a vaulted room was like half a barrel. If the room itself had circular walls, the ceiling became a bowl turned upside down. We call the bowl a dome, but the principle was the same—the Principle of the Arch. 
While an arch or vault or dome was being built, it was necessary to have something to build the stones upon, for until the last stone was in place, the arch would not hold. Usually a temporary framework of wood, shaped like a half circle and called “centering,” was therefore placed across from one wall to the other and on top of this the arch was built, starting at each side and working toward the top. When the last stone at the top, which was called the keystone, was put in place, then, and not until then, could the centering be knocked down and the arch would stand alone. In Assyria, however, there was so little wood for making centering that few arches or vaults were made and it was not until a thousand years or so later that arches were frequently used. 
In Egypt, the pyramids are still standing because they were made of stone and built in the most lasting shape there is. They cannot topple over or fall down. In the Two River Country not a single palace or temple is still standing. The bricks of which they were built have crumbled into dust again, so that all that is now left are the mounds of earth overgrown with weeds. 
It seems impossible to believe that our great cities of to-day may ever become just heaps of dirt, grown over with weeds like the old Assyrian and Babylonian cities, or that the millions of people now living in the houses and thronging the streets should ever disappear. Yet the people who lived in Assyria probably thought the same thing.