• The Translation Stone
• Brian O'Keeffe (bio)

In 1799, a large stone was discovered in Egypt. Inscribed on its surface were texts in Greek, demotic, and hieroglyphs. Would this stone permit the hitherto undecipherable hieroglyphs of the ancient Egyptians to be understood? Key to unlocking the secrets of the Egyptian script was that the three languages incised on the stone were equivalent to one another: each was a translation of the other. In a few short years, the code was broken and the hieroglyphic riddle solved. Finally the meaning of those elegantly oval eyes, proud-beaked falcons, and bulbous scarab beetles was translated into French and English. Egypt—the entire country a scroll of lapidary writing unfurling from obelisk to pyramid to temple complex and burial chamber—now became legible. The Rosetta Stone, as it's now known, of course, is the emblematic artifact of translation itself. It is the translation stone.

Before Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion accomplished their translation work, the Egyptian hieroglyph was, along with the Sphinx, a byword for enigma itself. Greeks, Romans, and Ottomans attempted the translation, but in vain. But as much as hieroglyphics daunted all those who attempted to penetrate their glyptic secrecies, some wondered whether they also represented an ideal language, as if pictograms might somehow be more expressive of concepts and ideas than the writing systems of Greek or Latin. Plotinus, in his Enneads, speaking of "the wise of Egypt," remarked that "in their effort towards philosophical statement, they left aside the writing-forms that take in the detail of words and sentences—those characters that represent sounds and convey the propositions of reasoning—and drew pictures instead, engraving in the temple-inscriptions a separate image for every separate item." Discreteness, rather than the clotted details of words forming into sentences, is what Plotinus likes here: perhaps philosophy is better articulated when one image expresses one distinct idea, no more, no less. "Thus," writes Plotinus, "they exhibited the mode in which the Supreme goes forth." As philosophy [End Page 105] dreamed its dreams of Supreme Ideas, ideal Essences and Forms, the desire for a universal, indeed primordial language accompanied that dream. In his work Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1652–54) Athanasius Kircher claimed not only to have translated the Egyptian hieroglyphs but also that Adam and Eve spoke that language in the Garden of Eden. And the frontispiece to Johann Becher's 1661 book, Character pro notitia linguarum universali, another proposal for a universal language, depicts his characters inscribed on an Egyptian obelisk. The investment in Egyptian hieroglyphs waxed and waned with the centuries, some countering with the proposal that a universal language is best achieved by mathematics and logic, some others looking to Chinese instead.

In The Advancement of Learning, Sir Francis Bacon firmly objects, however: Egyptian hieroglyphs are too primitive to serve a modern philosophical purpose, even if one could translate them. Yet once they were translated, thanks to Young and Champollion, then another kind of "translation" became possible. Here, it's a matter of Hegel and his philosophy of history. At issue is how to counterpose ancient Egypt and ancient Greece, and shift from the former to the latter in order to continue the dialectical inspection of history's "spiritual" logic. But the enigmas of Egypt resist that dialectical shift, much to Hegel's vexation. The Egyptian spirit, he wrote, "stands before us as a mighty taskmaster"—a daunting foe for Hegel's self-confident philosophy of history. Egypt's hieroglyphs, petroglyphs, and sphinxes resist him, and must therefore be overcome. Happily, Champollion comes to Hegel's rescue, and it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that the Rosetta Stone and its translation enabled the dialectical moves of Hegel's own philosophy: once Champollion translated the Egyptian enigma, Hegel's own "translation" could now proceed whereby Egypt is transposed into Greece. The sieved leftovers of Egyptian spirit were bequeathed to Greek thought and civilization by the Ptolemies to posterity; the unusably dead enigmas of Egypt could be left behind in the sepulchral pyramids and ornate burial pits of the Valley of the Kings. Oedipus, the ambiguous hero of the Grecocentric West, moreover preceded Champollion by solving the...

• 翻译石
• 布莱恩·奥基夫（简介）

1799年，在埃及发现了一块大石头。其表面刻有希腊文、通俗文字和象形文字。这块石头能让人们理解迄今为止无法辨认的古埃及象形文字吗？解开埃及文字秘密的关键在于，刻在石头上的三种语言彼此等效：每种语言都是另一种语言的翻译。短短几年内，密码被破解，象形文字之谜被解开。最后，那些优雅的椭圆形眼睛、骄傲的喙隼和球状圣甲虫的含义被翻译成法语和英语。埃及——整个国家就像一幅宝石书写的卷轴，从方尖碑到金字塔，再到寺庙建筑群和墓室——现在变得清晰可辨。当然，现在众所周知的罗塞塔石碑本身就是翻译的象征性文物。这是翻译石。

在托马斯·杨和让-弗朗索瓦·商博良完成翻译工作之前，埃及象形文字和狮身人面像本身就是谜团的代名词。希腊人、罗马人和奥斯曼人尝试翻译，但徒劳无功。但是，尽管象形文字让所有试图了解其象形文字秘密的人感到畏惧，但有些人想知道它们是否也代表了一种理想的语言，好像象形文字在某种程度上比希腊语或拉丁语的书写系统更能表达概念和思想。普罗提诺在他的《九章集》中谈到“埃及的智者”时说：“在他们努力进行哲学陈述的过程中，他们撇开了吸收单词和句子细节的书写形式——那些代表声音和传达意义的字符。推理的命题——而是画图，在寺庙铭文中为每个单独的项目雕刻一个单独的图像。” 普罗提诺在这里喜欢的是离散性，而不是形成句子的单词的凝结细节：也许当一幅图像表达一个独特的想法时，哲学会更好地表达出来，不多也不少。普罗提诺写道：“因此，他们展示了至尊者前进的方式。” 正如哲学[完第105页]梦想着最高思想、理想本质和形式的梦想一样，对普遍的、实际上是原始语言的渴望也伴随着这个梦想。阿塔那修斯·基歇尔（Athanasius Kircher）在其著作《埃及俄狄浦斯》（Oedipus Aegyptiacus，1652-54）中声称他不仅翻译了埃及象形文字，而且亚当和夏娃在伊甸园里也说过这种语言。约翰·贝歇 (Johann Becher) 于 1661 年出版的书《Character pro notitia linguarum universali》（另一项关于通用语言的提案）的卷首插画描绘了刻在埃及方尖碑上的人物。几个世纪以来，对埃及象形文字的投资有增有减，一些人反对“通用语言最好通过数学和逻辑来实现”的建议，另一些人则转而寻求中文。

然而，弗朗西斯·培根爵士在《学习的进步》一书中坚决反对：埃及象形文字太原始，无法服务于现代哲学目的，即使人们可以翻译它们。然而，由于杨和商博良的帮助，它们一旦被翻译，另一种“翻译”就成为可能。在这里，这是黑格尔和他的历史哲学的问题。问题在于如何对立古埃及和古希腊，从古埃及转向古希腊，以继续辩证地审视历史的“精神”逻辑。但埃及的谜团抵制了这种辩证的转变，这让黑格尔非常烦恼。他写道，埃及精神“像一个强大的监工一样站在我们面前”——黑格尔自信的历史哲学的可怕敌人。埃及的象形文字、岩画和狮身人面像抵抗着他，因此必须被克服。令人高兴的是，商博良拯救了黑格尔，毫不夸张地说，罗塞塔石碑及其翻译使黑格​​尔自己的哲学得以辩证运动：一旦商博良翻译了埃及之谜，黑格尔自己的“翻译”现在就可以继续进行埃及被转换为希腊。埃及精神的筛分残渣被托勒密王朝遗赠给希腊思想和文明。埃及无法使用的死亡之谜可能会被留在帝王谷的坟墓金字塔和华丽的墓坑中。俄狄浦斯是希腊中心主义西方的模棱两可的英雄，而且他先于商博良解决了……