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They in turn were vanquished by the followers of the great desert God, Ashur, who called themselves Assyrians
沒過多久，他們被同樣信仰沙漠大神阿舒爾的亞述人所征服。亞述人以首都尼尼微為中心，
and who made the city of Nineveh the center of a vast and terrible empire which conquered all of western Asia and Egypt and gathered taxes from countless subject races
建立了一個(gè)囊括全部西亞與埃及的恐怖帝國，并向統(tǒng)治下的無數(shù)種族征收賦稅。
until the end of the seventh century before the birth of Christ when the Chaldeans, also a Semitic tribe, re-established Babylon and made that city the most important capital of that day.
到公元前7世紀(jì)，同為閃米特部族的迎勒底人重建了巴比倫，使它成為當(dāng)時(shí)世界上最重要的首都。
Nebuchadnezzar, the best known of their Kings, encouraged the study of science,
迦勒底人最著名的國王尼布甲尼撒鼓勵(lì)科學(xué)研究，
and our modern knowledge of astronomy and mathematics is all based upon certain first principles which were discovered by the Chaldeans.
我們當(dāng)代的天文學(xué)和數(shù)學(xué)就是從沙勒底人發(fā)現(xiàn)的最基本的原理中發(fā)展而來的。
In the year 538 B.C., a crude tribe of Persian shepherds invaded this old land and overthrew the empire of the Chaldeans.
公元前538年，一支野蠻的波斯游牧部落侵占了這塊古老的土地，推翻了迦勒底人的帝國。
Two hundred years later, they in turn were overthrown by Alexander the Great, who turned the Fertile Valley, the old melting-pot of so many Semitic races, into a Greek province.
200年后，亞歷山大大帝擊敗了他們，把這塊富饒的河谷、眾多閃米特部族的大熔爐，變成了馬其頓的一個(gè)行省。
Next came the Romans and after the Romans, the Turks,
隨后又來了羅馬人，羅馬人之后是土耳其人。
and Mesopotamia, the second centre of the world's civilisation, became a vast wilderness where huge mounds of earth told a story of ancient glory.
而美索不達(dá)米亞，這個(gè)世界文明的第二中心，終于淪為了一片廣漠的荒原。只有那些巨大的土丘，在述說著這塊古老土地昔日的光榮與滄桑。
