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The British Museum bull sculpture was cast using the lost-wax technique.
大英博物館的這尊公牛雕像使用了失蠟法來鑄造。
The artist firstly models his vision in wax, then he moulds clay around it.
藝術家首先用蠟制成雕像，
And this is then put into the fire, which hardens the clay and melts the wax.
其后在外裹上一層黏土，放入火中烘烤。
The wax is then drained off and, in its place, a bronze alloy is poured into the mould, so that it takes on the exact form the wax had occupied.
待黏土變硬、蠟融 化之后，將蠟液排出，往模具中注入青銅溶液。
When it cools, the mould is broken to reveal the bronze which can then be finished-polished, inscribed or filed, to produce the final sculpture.
冷卻之后再敲開模子，取出青銅，進行最后加工—拋光、鐫刻或挫平。雕像最終成形。
The bull leaper is quite badly corroded.
雖然 這座雕像如今已嚴重腐蝕，
It's now degraded to a greenish-brown colour.
外表呈灰棕色，
It would never of course have been as sparkling as gold but, originally, it would have had a powerful, seductive gleam.
但剛制作完成時必定極為精美。 青銅當然不能像黃金一樣閃閃發光，但其自有一種迷人的光澤。
It's the bronze that makes sculptures like this one gleam, and it's the bronze that lets our bull move from myth into history.
制作這尊雕像所用的青銅原料讓我們的公牛從神話回到現實。
At first sight, it's surprising that it's made of bronze at all, considering that neither copper nor tin-both of which are needed-are found on Crete.
事實上，光是它用青銅制成這一點就足夠讓人驚訝，因為克里特并沒有制造青銅所需的銅和錫，
Both came from much further afield, with copper coming from Cyprus-the very name means the 'copper island'-or from the eastern Mediterranean coast.
二者都需要從遠方運來。銅有可能來自塞浦路斯它的名 字本身便有“青銅島”之意,也可能來自地中海東岸。
But tin had an even longer journey to make, travelling along trade routes from eastern Turkey, and sometimes even from Afghanistan.
錫則走過了更 漫長的旅途，沿當時的貿易路線從土耳其東部，甚至是從阿富汗來到這里。
It was often in short supply, because those trade routes were frequently interrupted, on occasion by pirates.
這些路線上海盜猖獗，導致錫的供應常常短缺。
Here with the sculpture itself, you can actually see something of that struggle to secure the tin supplies.
事實上，從這尊雕像上，你便能看到一些為了保證供應所做的努力。
There hasn't been quite enough in the alloy, which explains why the surface is rather pock-marked, and also why the structure has been weak, so that the hind legs of the bull have broken off over time.
合金中錫的比例顯然太小，因此表面上才會坑坑洼洼，合金的質地也相對脆弱，牛的后腿因此折斷了。
