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For me, the most remarkable thing about this papyrus is how close it lets me get to the fascinating quirky details of aspects of daily life under the pharaohs, not least culinary.
對我而言，紙草書最有價值的一點是讓我們能夠近距離觀察法老治下古怪的日常生活細節，尤其是飲食方面。我們了解到，如果你用“填鴨”的方式養鵝，需要的糧食是自然散養的五倍。
So did the Egyptians really eat foie gras?
埃及人難道也吃鵝肝？
From the papyrus, you can learn that if you force-feed a goose, it needs five times as much grain as a free-range goose will eat.
你可以從紙草書中了解到,如果你喂養一只鵝,它是自由放養的鵝所吃谷物的5倍。
But Ancient Egypt also seems to have had battery-farming, because we're told that geese kept in a coop-and so presumably unable to move-will need only a quarter of the food consumed by their free-range counterparts, and so would be much cheaper to fatten for market.
同時， 他們似乎也圈養，因為紙上提到養在籠里的鵝所需的食物是散養的四分之一，因此如果都用于販賣，籠養鵝的價格要低得多。
Whether there were also champions of animal rights in Ancient Egypt at this date we just don't know.
而在那個年代的古埃及是否也存在動物權利,我們并不知曉。
But in between the beer and the bread, and the hypothetical foie gras, you can see the logistical infrastructure of an enduring and powerful state, able to mobilise vast human and economic resources for public works and military campaigns.
在啤酒、面包和我們假想的鵝肝之間，能夠勾勒出一個強大持久的國家的后勤保障結構，它能夠自由調動廣大的勞動力資源與經濟資源，來進行公共與軍事建設。
The Egypt of the pharaohs was, to its contemporaries, a land of superlatives-astonishing visitors from all over the Middle East by the colossal scale of its buildings and sculptures, as it still does us today.
在那個時代，法老的埃及是世界上最強盛的國家。來自中東各地的訪客與如今的游客一樣，都對這里規模巨大的建筑與雕像嘖嘖稱奇。
Like all successful states, then as now, it needed people who could do the maths.
每一個成功的國家，不管是過去還是現在，都需要數學人才。
And if you're still counting the cats, and the mice, and the ears of grain in the puzzle that I began with, the answer is, of course...19,607.
可能你還在思考本節開始時出的那道貓、老鼠和玉米的問題。答案是:一萬九千六百零七。
