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'When he arrived at the Museum in 1835, the hieroglyphic script had only just been deciphered, so the first step forward was to read all the inscriptions on his coffins, which told us who he was, what his job was, and something about the religious background that he knew.'
“1835年Hornedjitef來到博物館時，象形文字剛剛破譯，所以第一步就是閱讀棺槨上記錄著他身份、職位以及宗教信仰的文字。”
He was a priest in the Temple of Karnak around 250 BC. Like all Egyptians, he believed that if his body was preserved, he would live beyond death, but before reaching the afterlife, he would have to undertake a hazardous journey, for which he needed to prepare with the utmost care.
公元前250年左右，霍尼杰提夫(Hornedjitef)是卡納克(Karnak)神廟的一位牧師。像他的同胞一樣，他相信如果尸體保存下來，他將超越死亡，但在轉世前，他必須經歷一段危機四伏的長途跋涉，因此他小心翼翼地做好了準備工作。
So he took with him charms, amulets and spells for every eventuality. On the lid of his inner coffin, he even had painted a map of the heavens stretched out above him as an aid to navigation. Hornedjitef has, in fact, commissioned his own personal firmament and time-machine. This elaborate coffin will let him travel through both time and space, and all this meticulous preparation on his part has allowed us to travel in the opposite direction, back to him and to his world.
他隨身攜帶著吉祥物、護身符和咒語以防不測，甚至繪制了一幅蔓延在內棺棺蓋上的天體圖作為指引。事實上，他已經委托技師制作了自己的時空機器。他精雕細琢的棺材將引領他穿越時空，而他一絲不茍的準備將帶領我們追溯時光，故地重游。
'In the last 20 years, there have been huge steps forward in ways of gathering information. So we're now looking at the condition of the bodies non-invasively, just by scanning them. We can examine the teeth in great detail, look at the wear and the dental disease that they suffered from, we can look at the bones, we can see now that Hornedjitef had arthritis in his back which must have been very painful for him.' (John Taylor)
“近20年，搜集信息的技巧突飛猛進。現在我們僅利用掃描這種平和的方式就可以觀察尸體的狀況。我們能夠非常細致地檢查牙齒的磨損情況和疾病，我們還能看到骨骼。我們發現霍尼杰提夫(Hornedjitef)患有脊椎疾病，他當時一定覺得很疼。”——約翰·泰勒(John Taylor)
But the scientific advances of the last couple of decades have allowed us to find out about a great deal more than Hornedjitef's bad back. If the words on his coffin tell us about his place in society and what that society believed about life after death, the new scientific techniques let us go one stage further - to analyse the materials with which mummies and coffins were made, and to see how Egypt was connected to the world round about it.
然而，近幾十年的科學進展允許我們發現比霍尼杰提夫(Hornedjitef)的脊椎疾病更有價值的東西。棺材上的文字告訴我們他的社會地位和當時的社會信仰，新科技則使我們能進一步分析制作木乃伊和棺材的原材料以及埃及和周邊世界的聯系。
'But we can also look at substances that are being used in mummification, we can test them, we can look at the chemical composition of them to find out what materials were being used - maybe now we can look at where they were coming from. We can compare these chemical make-ups with substances found in different parts of the Mediterranean, and begin to reconstruct the trading networks that supplied these things to Egypt.
“我們還可以著眼于制作木乃伊所使用的化學物質，我們可以通過檢測化學成分確定原料種類，發現人們采用了哪些種原料，也許現在我們還可以著眼于原料產地。我們可以拿這些化學成分與地中海不同區域發現的物質做對比，重新構建向埃及提供這些物資的貿易網絡。
Some of the mummies have bitumen -the black tarry substance -on the surface and, by analysing the composition, it's possible to track it to its source - some of it we know came from the Dead Sea. So, all of this now is filling in these gaps which the texts don't really tell us about.' (John Taylor)
有些木乃伊表面含有瀝青，即一種黑色的柏油物質，我們可以通過化學成分分析追溯到它的發源地——我們已經知道有些來自死海地區。因此，這些填補了文字信息的空白。”——約翰·泰勒(John Taylor)
And of course it's not just Hornedjitef's mummy case that's telling us more and more. All the objects we'll be looking at in this series are releasing new information as scholars find new ways of examining them.
當然，向我們泄露更多信息的不止霍尼杰提夫(Hornedjitef)木乃伊，我們在這個系列中探討的所有展品，都在隨著學者們檢測方法的更新，向我們揭示出新的信息。
Most of the material that Hornedjitef had with him in his coffin was designed to guide him through the great journey to the afterlife, with star-maps and spells to help him overcome all foreseeable difficulties. The one thing his star-map certainly did not predict, was that he might ultimately wind up at the British Museum; let's face it, Bloomsbury might have been a bit of a disappointment to him!
霍尼杰提夫(Hornedjitef)攜帶在棺材中的大多數物品都是用來在漫長旅程中指引他到達來世的，星圖和咒語將幫助他克服所有可預見的劫難。然而，他的星圖并未預測出的是，他也許會在大英博物館終了此生。讓我們勇敢面對這個事實吧，雖然布魯姆伯利(Bloomsbury)難免對他有些失望！
