The C urse of the Unlucky Mummy

By Rose Eveleth

Sometime in the 1860s, five recent Oxford graduates took a trip to Egypt. Together they sailed down the Nile, a tourist attraction even then.1. the Nile: 尼羅河，世界上最長的河流，流經(jīng)非洲東部與北部；tourist attraction: 旅游景點(diǎn)。To remember their trip, they bought a souvenir in the mummy pits of Deir el-Bahri—the cof fin lid of a priestess of Amen-Ra.2. Deir el-Bahri: 爾巴赫里，在當(dāng)?shù)卣Z言中的意思是“北邊的修道院”，是一片位于尼羅河西岸的神廟與墓地的集合地；coffin lid: 棺木蓋子，棺蓋；priestess: 女祭司。The high priests of Amen-Ra, named after an Egyptian deity, were military rulers who commanded southern Egypt in the 21st Dynasty (1085 to 945 B.C.), a time of turmoil and strife.3. 亞曼蕊大祭司一族之名緣起于埃及神，是第21王朝（公元前1085年至公元前945年）埃及南方的軍事統(tǒng)治家族，那是一個(gè)禍亂相踵的年代。deity: 神，神；turmoil: 混亂，騷動；strife: 沖突，爭斗。With her wide, baleful eyes, open palms, and outstretched fingers,the priestess on the cof fin lid seemed to cast a malevolent allure.4. baleful: 邪惡的，不吉祥的；outstretched:伸開的，展開的；malevolent: 邪惡的，惡毒的；allure: 迷惑力，魅力。

On their way back from Egypt, two of the men died. A third went to Cairo and accidentally shot himself in the arm while quail hunting and had to have it amputated.5. Cairo: 開羅，埃及首都，是整個(gè)中東地區(qū)的政治、經(jīng)濟(jì)和商業(yè)中心之一；quail hunting: 打鵪鶉，鵪鶉狩獵；amputate: 截肢，砍斷 （臂、腿等）。Another member of the group, Arthur Wheeler, managed to make it back to England, only to lose his entire fortune gambling. He moved to America and lost his new fortune to both a flood and a fire. The cof fin lid was then placed under the care of Wheeler’s sister, who attempted to have it photographed in 1887. The photographer died, as did the porter6. porter: 搬運(yùn)工人。. The man asked to translate the hieroglyphs on the lid committed suicide.7. hieroglyph: 象形文字，象形圖案；commit suicide: 自殺，尋短見。The cof fin lid seemed almost certainly cursed. But this was only the beginning.

亞曼蕊的棺木

千年前的埃及，有一位美麗的女祭司，名叫亞曼蕊。她過世后，遺體遵照古埃及習(xí)俗被制成木乃伊葬在尼羅河旁。千年后，五位英國牛津大學(xué)畢業(yè)生來到埃及游玩，偶遇一個(gè)走私販子向他們兜售一具古埃及棺木。于是，他們以高價(jià)買下作為紀(jì)念品。但萬萬沒想到，這正是世界上一連串最離奇、最可怕的厄運(yùn)的開始……

Today, the 5-foot-tall “mummy board”8. board: 木板，薄板。此處代指亞曼蕊的棺蓋。lives in the British Museum, where it’s of ficially known as “artifact 22542.” The mummified priestess that may have lain beneath it has been lost to eternity.9. mummify: 將（尸體）制成木乃伊；eternity:永恒，永久。But it has another, more commonly used name:“Unlucky Mummy.”

Since its arrival at the museum in 1889, the Unlucky Mummy has been blamed for everything from the sinking of the Titanic to the escalation of World War I.10. Titanic: 泰坦尼克號，是當(dāng)時(shí)最大的客運(yùn)輪船，于1912年4月處女航時(shí)撞上冰山后沉沒；escalation:（戰(zhàn)爭）逐步升級，逐步擴(kuò)大。How this piece of wood become so intimately and persistently connected with death and destruction is a story of the endlessly swirling tales that people tell when they are afraid—of change, of politics, of science.11. 區(qū)區(qū)一塊木板，竟與死亡和毀滅如此緊密、持久地聯(lián)系在一起，究其本質(zhì)不過是人類面對改變、政治、科學(xué)的恐懼時(shí)相互傳訴的一則說不清、道不盡的故事。swirl: 流傳（尤用于新聞報(bào)道）。It is the kind of story that never dies, only feeds upon itself, updating and morphing and tightening its grip no matter how much light is thrown on it.12. feed upon:（某種感覺或過程）因……而變得更強(qiáng)烈；morph: 改變，變化；grip: 掌控，支配。

德皇威廉二世

By the time the Unlucky Mummy arrived at the British Museum, its reputation had seeped13. seep: 滲透，逐漸散開。through British private society. While the museum curators generally scoffed at the alleged curse, men at soirees, dinner parties, and “ghost clubs,”traded stories of its powers.14. curator: 博物館館長；scoff: 嘲笑，譏笑；alleged: 被指稱的，所謂的；soiree:〈法〉晚會，社交聚會；ghost club: 鬼魂俱樂部，是19世紀(jì)后半葉在倫敦建立并流行起來的關(guān)注、調(diào)查超自然現(xiàn)象的組織；trade: 互相交換。But it wasn’t until 1904 that the broader public got a whiff of15. a whiff of: 一點(diǎn)點(diǎn)，些許。the curse. That was the year that a young, dashing, and ambitious journalist named Bertram Fletcher Robinson published a frontpage article in the Daily Express, called “A Priestess of Death,” about the allegedly haunted mummy.16. dashing: 精力充沛的，闖勁十足的；Daily Express:《每日快報(bào)》，英國的一份小報(bào)，創(chuàng)刊于1900年；haunted: 鬧鬼的。“It is certain that the Egyptians had powers which we in the 20th century may laugh at, yet can never understand,”he wrote.

Three years later, Robinson died suddenly of a fever,and his friends immediately thought of the mummy’s curse. “The very last time I saw him he told me a wonderful tale about a mummy which had caused the death of everybody who had to do with it,” wrote Archibald Marshall, an English author and journalist.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes,recalled that he had cautioned Robinson not to get involved with the mummy.17. Sherlock Holmes: 夏洛克·福爾摩斯，19世紀(jì)末英國偵探小說家阿瑟·柯南·道爾爵士創(chuàng)作的人物；caution: 勸……謹(jǐn)慎小心，告誡。“I warned Mr. Robinson against concerning himself with the mummy at the British Museum,” he wrote. “He persisted, and his death occurred… I told him he was tempting fate by pursuing his inquiries, but he was fascinated and would not desist.”18. tempt fate: 冒（不必要的）危險(xiǎn)，玩命；pursue: 追查，尋求；desist: 克制自己不做，停止。Doyle even went so far as to point out that should the mummy kill someone, fever would be the way she did it. “The immediate cause of death was typhoid fever,” he wrote, “but that is the way in which the ‘elementals’ guarding the mummy might act.19. typhoid fever: 傷寒；elemental: 元素精靈，最先由煉金術(shù)中提出的概念，將世界分為四種元素及其守護(hù)精靈，包括土元素、水元素、風(fēng)元素和火元素。”

Robinson was not the only alleged victim. The list of stories about the mummy’s in fluence began to grow longer—people who sketched the mummy having mysterious accidents, a lady falling down the stairs, a captain meeting financial ruin, a psychic claiming the mummy haunted him for weeks.20. sketch: 畫素描；psychic: 靈媒，通靈的人。There was a rumor that the mummy had been on the Titanic and caused the ship’s deadly collision.21. rumor: 謠言，傳聞；collision: 碰撞，撞擊。One person claimed the mummy, at the peak of her wrath, had been presented to the Kaiser and caused the outbreak of World War I.22. at the peak of: 在……的高峰期；wrath: 憤怒，暴怒；Kaiser: 凱撒，在德文中的意思是 “帝王，君主”（此處指的是威廉二世，末代德皇和普魯士國王，他在薩拉熱窩事件之后挑起了第一次世界大戰(zhàn)）；outbreak:（戰(zhàn)爭、叛亂等的）爆發(fā)。

As it happens, the Unlucky Mummy arrived in England during the perfect curse-making storm. It was a time when science challenged traditional beliefs, experiments into the occult were becoming more common, and when tales of ghosts and threatening monsters were entering their golden age.23. 那是一個(gè)科學(xué)挑戰(zhàn)傳統(tǒng)信仰的年代，對神秘事物的實(shí)驗(yàn)變得越來越普遍，鬼魂和恐怖怪物的傳說闖進(jìn)了英國的黃金時(shí)代。occult: 超自然，神秘事物。The Victorians were afraid of a lot of things: empires,justice, the rise of women in society, knowledge, truth, and the role of expertise. And on top of that, there was a war going on.

At the time, Britain was occupying Egypt. It had invaded the Middle Eastern country in 1882, bombarding Alexandria for 10 and a half hours from the sea.24. bombard: 炮轟，炮擊；Alexandria:亞歷山大港，埃及的第二大城市，地中海岸的重要港口。19世紀(jì)末期，亞歷山大港是世界主要的船運(yùn)及交易中心，蓬勃的棉花業(yè)與連接紅海和地中海地區(qū)的優(yōu)越地理位置為這個(gè)城市帶來了財(cái)富。The British didn’t lose a single boat. While the occupation of Egypt was a military success, it was met with trepidation back home.25. occupation: 占領(lǐng)，侵占；trepidation: 恐懼，憂慮。Should a European power intervene26. intervene: 干涉，干預(yù)。in the affairs of a Middle Eastern country? While the occupation troubled many, some didn’t want to outwardly express their anxieties. So they turned to objects that represented the country in question: Egyptian artifacts. The idea that objects from Egypt like the mummy board would exact revenge27. exact revenge: 實(shí)施報(bào)復(fù)。was a way to express anxiety without actually talking about war.

As wartime fears ran through much of England, science began to take people further down rabbit holes of knowledge,causing them to worry about just how far scientists would go to uncover truth.28. down the rabbit hole: 比喻進(jìn)入一個(gè)未知世界，一個(gè)充滿未知的冒險(xiǎn)，這一比喻來源于《愛麗絲夢游奇境記》；uncover: 揭開，揭露。When scientists went into tombs to gather relics, they weren’t just moving rocks, they were moving sacred ways of thinking.29. relic: 遺物，遺跡；sacred: 神圣不可侵犯的。

It wasn’t just in the realm of stories that the British were venting30. vent: 發(fā)泄（情感等），吐露。their fears. This was also the era that gave birth to tabloid31. tabloid: （圖片多以刊登聳人聽聞的消息為主，版面約等于大報(bào)一半的）八卦小報(bào)，庸俗小報(bào)。journalism. Newspapers fanned the flames of anxiety and reinforced them,32. fan the flame: 煽動起，扇火（使之更旺）；reinforce: 加強(qiáng)，強(qiáng)化。building a base for more tales of monsters and mummies. Several big-brand English tabloid newspapers were dedicated to selling papers with bold headlines and little regard for facts. The Unlucky Mummy was too big of a spectacle to remain fodder for just England’s tabloids.33. spectacle: 奇觀，令人好奇的事物；fodder: （尤在文學(xué)領(lǐng)域）素材。A 1909 headline in San Francisco Examiner exclaimed, “Ghost of Mummy Haunts the British Museum: MUST GO NOW: For Thirty Years Dead Egyptian Priestess has Spelled Disaster.”34. San Francisco Examiner:《舊金山觀察家報(bào)》，在美國加利福尼亞州發(fā)行的一份免費(fèi)報(bào)紙，從19世紀(jì)末就開始持續(xù)發(fā)行；exclaim: 叫喊著說出；spell disaster: 招致災(zāi)難，帶來危險(xiǎn)。

泰坦尼克號沉船事件

Today the British Museum has little to say about the Unlucky Mummy. The artifact page for the mummy board has a brief note, hidden in the curator’s comments. It recounts a few of the most notable myths, including that the mummy was on board the Titanic, and adds: “Needless to say,there is no truth in any of this; the object had never left the Museum until it went to a temporary exhibition in 1990.”35. recount: 描述，詳述；temporary: 暫時(shí)的，臨時(shí)的。

The museum’s dismissal36. dismissal: 摒棄，不予理會。of the myths is unfortunate for the tabloids. Once an item is encased in glass, given a number and archived into a database, it is supposed to be stripped of its mythical aura and magic.37. encase: 把……放入箱子或盒子里；archive: 把……存檔；be stripped of:被取消，被剝奪；aura: 氣氛，氛圍。Pushing magic away, though, only makes people cling to it harder,especially when the object is closely connected with human remains.38. cling to: 依戀，懷念；human remain:人體殘骸。Indeed, mummy stories still walk among us.

In a culture of anxiety, conflicted over how science shapes our understanding of the world, the allure of the occult remains. Will Gervais, a psychologist at the University of Kentucky who studies superstitious beliefs,says the British Museum should embrace the Unlucky Mummy’s curse.39. psychologist: 心理學(xué)家； superstitious:迷信的；embrace: （欣然）接受?！癐’d advise the museum to sell T-shirts about the mummy, then take the proceeds40. proceeds: 收入，收益。and invest the money into other science-education programs that are more likely to succeed.” And, in one way, the British Museum has. Last summer it showed the 1959 film The Mummy41. The Mummy: 《永眠的詛咒》，1959年上映的一部英國恐怖電影。in its courtyard. “You can bury people’s superstitions under a mountain of evidence,” Gervais says, “and the superstitions will climb right on out.”42. 證據(jù)之山可將人們的迷信壓在腳下，然而這些迷信總會爬出來重見天日。Not unlike an unlucky mummy.