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: 尼罗河，世界上最长的河流，流经非洲东部与北部；tourist attraction: 旅游景点。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: 尔巴赫里，在当地语言中的意思是“北边的修道院”，是一片位于尼罗河西岸的神庙与墓地的集合地；coffin lid: 棺木盖子，棺盖；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. 亚曼蕊大祭司一族之名缘起于埃及神，是第21王朝（公元前1085年至公元前945年）埃及南方的军事统治家族，那是一个祸乱相踵的年代。deity: 神，神；turmoil: 混乱，骚动；strife: 冲突，争斗。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: 邪恶的，不吉祥的；outstretched:伸开的，展开的；malevolent: 邪恶的，恶毒的；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: 开罗，埃及首都，是整个中东地区的政治、经济和商业中心之一；quail hunting: 打鹌鹑，鹌鹑狩猎；amputate: 截肢，砍断 （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: 搬运工人。. The man asked to translate the hieroglyphs on the lid committed suicide.7. hieroglyph: 象形文字，象形图案；commit suicide: 自杀，寻短见。The cof fin lid seemed almost certainly cursed. But this was only the beginning.

亚曼蕊的棺木

千年前的埃及，有一位美丽的女祭司，名叫亚曼蕊。她过世后，遗体遵照古埃及习俗被制成木乃伊葬在尼罗河旁。千年后，五位英国牛津大学毕业生来到埃及游玩，偶遇一个走私贩子向他们兜售一具古埃及棺木。于是，他们以高价买下作为纪念品。但万万没想到，这正是世界上一连串最离奇、最可怕的厄运的开始……

Today, the 5-foot-tall “mummy board”8. board: 木板，薄板。此处代指亚曼蕊的棺盖。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: 将（尸体）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: 泰坦尼克号，是当时最大的客运轮船，于1912年4月处女航时撞上冰山后沉没；escalation:（战争）逐步升级，逐步扩大。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. 区区一块木板，竟与死亡和毁灭如此紧密、持久地联系在一起，究其本质不过是人类面对改变、政治、科学的恐惧时相互传诉的一则说不清、道不尽的故事。swirl: 流传（尤用于新闻报道）。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:（某种感觉或过程）因……而变得更强烈；morph: 改变，变化；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: 渗透，逐渐散开。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: 博物馆馆长；scoff: 嘲笑，讥笑；alleged: 被指称的，所谓的；soiree:〈法〉晚会，社交聚会；ghost club: 鬼魂俱乐部，是19世纪后半叶在伦敦建立并流行起来的关注、调查超自然现象的组织；trade: 互相交换。But it wasn’t until 1904 that the broader public got a whiff of15. a whiff of: 一点点，些许。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，闯劲十足的；Daily Express:《每日快报》，英国的一份小报，创刊于1900年；haunted: 闹鬼的。“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·福尔摩斯，19世纪末英国侦探小说家阿瑟·柯南·道尔爵士创作的人物；caution: 劝……谨慎小心，告诫。“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）危险，玩命；pursue: 追查，寻求；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: 伤寒；elemental: 元素精灵，最先由炼金术中提出的概念，将世界分为四种元素及其守护精灵，包括土元素、水元素、风元素和火元素。”

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: 画素描；psychic: 灵媒，通灵的人。There was a rumor that the mummy had been on the Titanic and caused the ship’s deadly collision.21. rumor: 谣言，传闻；collision: 碰撞，撞击。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: 愤怒，暴怒；Kaiser: 凯撒，在德文中的意思是 “帝王，君主”（此处指的是威廉二世，末代德皇和普鲁士国王，他在萨拉热窝事件之后挑起了第一次世界大战）；outbreak:（战争、叛乱等的）爆发。

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. 那是一个科学挑战传统信仰的年代，对神秘事物的实验变得越来越普遍，鬼魂和恐怖怪物的传说闯进了英国的黄金时代。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: 炮轰，炮击；Alexandria:亚历山大港，埃及的第二大城市，地中海岸的重要港口。19世纪末期，亚历山大港是世界主要的船运及交易中心，蓬勃的棉花业与连接红海和地中海地区的优越地理位置为这个城市带来了财富。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: 占领，侵占；trepidation: 恐惧，忧虑。Should a European power intervene26. intervene: 干涉，干预。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: 实施报复。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: 比喻进入一个未知世界，一个充满未知的冒险，这一比喻来源于《爱丽丝梦游奇境记》；uncover: 揭开，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: 遗物，遗迹；sacred: 神圣不可侵犯的。

It wasn’t just in the realm of stories that the British were venting30. vent: 发泄（情感等），吐露。their fears. This was also the era that gave birth to tabloid31. tabloid: （图片多以刊登耸人听闻的消息为主，版面约等于大报一半的）八卦小报，庸俗小报。journalism. Newspapers fanned the flames of anxiety and reinforced them,32. fan the flame: 煽动起，扇火（使之更旺）；reinforce: 加强，强化。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: 奇观，令人好奇的事物；fodder: （尤在文学领域）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:《旧金山观察家报》，在美国加利福尼亚州发行的一份免费报纸，从19世纪末就开始持续发行；exclaim: 叫喊着说出；spell disaster: 招致灾难，带来危险。

泰坦尼克号沉船事件

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，详述；temporary: 暂时的，临时的。

The museum’s dismissal36. dismissal: 摒弃，不予理会。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……存档；be stripped of:被取消，被剥夺；aura: 气氛，氛围。Pushing magic away, though, only makes people cling to it harder,especially when the object is closely connected with human remains.38. cling to: 依恋，怀念；human remain:人体残骸。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: 心理学家； superstitious:迷信的；embrace: （欣然）接受。“I’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: 《永眠的诅咒》，1959年上映的一部英国恐怖电影。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. 证据之山可将人们的迷信压在脚下，然而这些迷信总会爬出来重见天日。Not unlike an unlucky mummy.