On January 26, 2013, a band of al-Qaeda militants entered the ancient city of Timbuktu on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. There, they set fire to a medieval library of 30,000 manuscripts written in Arabic and several African languages and ranging in subject from astronomy to geography, history to medicine, including one book which records perhaps the first treatment for male erectile dysfunction. Unknown in the West, this was the collected wisdom of an entire continent, the voice of Africa at a time when Africa was thought not to have a voice at all. The mayor of Bamako, who witnessed the event, called the burning of the manuscripts "a crime against world cultural heritage." And he was right -- or he would have been, if it weren't for the fact that he was also lying.
2013 年 1 月 26 日, 蓋達組織武裝部隊進入 古城廷布克圖, 此城位於撒哈拉沙漠南緣。 他們放火燒了一座中世紀的圖書館, 當中有三萬份手稿 全由阿拉伯文 以及幾種非洲語言撰寫而成, 題材遍及天文學、 地理學、歷史和醫學, 其中一本書記載的 可能是第一筆 治療男性勃起障礙的處方。 西方人有所不知, 這可是整塊非洲大陸的智慧結晶, 是非洲在大家認為無聲的時期 所發出的聲音。 巴馬科市長目睹此事, 稱這起火燒手稿事件為 「破壞世界文化遺產之罪」。 他說的對, 應該說,要不是他說了謊, 不然他說的就對。
In fact, just before, African scholars had collected a random assortment of old books and left them out for the terrorists to burn. Today, the collection lies hidden in Bamako, the capital of Mali, moldering in the high humidity. What was rescued by ruse is now once again in jeopardy, this time by climate.
事實上,在那之前, 非洲學者已經事先取出幾類古書, 避免這些書被恐怖分子燒毀。 今天,這套書藏在巴馬科, 馬利的首都, 因為溼度太重而逐漸腐壞。 之前千方百計拯救的東西, 現在又再次陷入危機, 這次是受到氣候威脅。
But Africa, and the far-flung corners of the world, are not the only places, or even the main places in which manuscripts that could change the history of world culture are in jeopardy. Several years ago, I conducted a survey of European research libraries and discovered that, at the barest minimum, there are 60,000 manuscripts pre-1500 that are illegible because of water damage, fading, mold and chemical reagents. The real number is likely double that, and that doesn't even count Renaissance manuscripts and modern manuscripts and cultural heritage objects such as maps.
但非洲和那些遠在天邊的世界角落 不是唯一,甚至不是主要 讓那些改變世界文明歷史的手稿 陷入險境的地方。 幾年前, 我對歐洲研究圖書館做調查, 發現保守估計至少 有六萬份史前 1500 年的手稿 變得難以閱讀,因為受到水害、 褪色、黴菌和化學試劑影響。 實際數字可能是兩倍, 而且還不把 文藝復興時期和近代的手稿, 還有文化遺產文物, 像是地圖算進來。
What if there were a technology that could recover these lost and unknown works? Imagine worldwide how a trove of hundreds of thousands of previously unknown texts could radically transform our knowledge of the past. Imagine what unknown classics we would discover which would rewrite the canons of literature, history, philosophy, music -- or, more provocatively, that could rewrite our cultural identities, building new bridges between people and culture. These are the questions that transformed me from a medieval scholar, a reader of texts, into a textual scientist.
要是有科技 能復原這些失去且不知名的文物, 該有多好? 想像全世界 百萬件珍貴文物中的一件, 以目前無人知曉的古文記載, 是怎麼徹底顛覆 我們對過去的認識。 想像我們可能找到的經典文物, 可能改寫文學、歷史、 哲學和音樂的經典, 或是更誇張點, 可能改寫我們的文化認同, 建立人類和文化之間的新橋梁。 這些問題改變了我, 讓我從中古世紀學者、文字讀者, 轉變為文本科學家。
What an unsatisfying word "reader" is. For me, it conjures up images of passivity, of someone sitting idly in an armchair waiting for knowledge to come to him in a neat little parcel. How much better to be a participant in the past, an adventurer in an undiscovered country, searching for the hidden text. As an academic, I was a mere reader. I read and taught the same classics that people had been reading and teaching for hundreds of years -- Virgil, Ovid, Chaucer, Petrarch -- and with every scholarly article that I published I added to human knowledge in ever-diminishing slivers of insight. What I wanted to be was an archaeologist of the past, a discoverer of literature, an Indiana Jones without the whip -- or, actually, with the whip.
讓人不滿意的是「讀者」這兩個字。 這讓我腦海浮現一種被動的樣貌, 就像某人呆坐在沙發椅上, 等著知識裝在精巧的包裝裡送上門。 要是能成為過去的參與者 就好多了, 當一個探險家,前往無人發掘之境 尋找隱藏的文字。 身為學者,我只是個讀者。 我閱讀、教導的經典 是千百年來 人們一直在閱讀和教導的經典, 像是維吉爾、奧維德、 喬叟、佩特拉克, 我發表的每一篇學術文章, 都只是在人類知識加上一筆 會永遠消逝的見解。 我想成為的 是過去的考古學家、 文學的發現者、 沒有鞭子的印第安納.瓊斯, 其實有鞭子也不錯。
(Laughter) And I wanted it not just for myself but I wanted it for my students as well.
(笑聲) 不只是為了我自己, 也是為了我的學生。
And so six years ago, I changed the direction of my career. At the time, I was working on "The Chess of Love," the last important long poem of the European Middle Ages never to have been edited. And it wasn't edited because it existed in only one manuscript which was so badly damaged during the firebombing of Dresden in World War II that generations of scholars had pronounced it lost. For five years, I had been working with an ultraviolet lamp trying to recover traces of the writing and I'd gone about as far as technology at the time could actually take me.
因此六年前,我轉行了。 那時候我在編輯《棋之愛》, 最新發現的歐洲中古世紀長詩, 從未編輯過。 沒人編是因為它只存在一份手稿中, 這稿在二戰炮轟德勒斯登時 被嚴重損毀, 世代學者都聲稱稿已經不見了。 五年來,我一直靠著一盞紫外線燈 試圖還原書寫的字跡, 我做到當時科技能幫我的極限。
And so I did what many people do. I went online, and there I learned about how multispectral imaging had been used to recover two lost treatises of the famed Greek mathematician Archimedes from a 13th-century palimpsest. A palimpsest is a manuscript which has been erased and overwritten.
因此後來我和大家做一樣的事。 我上網, 學到關於 多光譜造像過去怎麼用來 復原希臘知名數學家 阿基米德的兩份論文, 原稿寫在 13 世紀羊皮紙上。 羊皮紙這種手稿 會一直被清除、覆寫。
And so, out of the blue, I decided to write to the lead imaging scientist on the Archimedes palimpsest project, Professor Roger Easton, with a plan and a plea. And to my surprise, he actually wrote back. With his help, I was able to win a grant from the US government to build a transportable, multispectral imaging lab, And with this lab, I transformed what was a charred and faded mess into a new medieval classic.
因此突然靈光一閃, 我決定寫封信 給那位負責阿基米德羊皮紙計畫的 首席影像科學家, 羅傑.伊斯頓教授, 信中附上計畫和請願。 讓我驚訝的是,他回我信了。 因為他的幫忙, 我申請到美國政府補助, 建造一個可移動的 多光譜造像實驗室。 有了這個實驗室, 我得以將焦黑、褪色的東西, 轉變為嶄新的中古世紀經典。
So how does multispectral imaging actually work? Well, the idea behind multispectral imaging is something that anyone who is familiar with infrared night vision goggles will immediately appreciate: that what we can see in the visible spectrum of light is only a tiny fraction of what's actually there. The same is true with invisible writing. Our system uses 12 wavelengths of light between the ultraviolet and the infrared, and these are shown down onto the manuscript from above from banks of LEDs, and another multispectral light source which comes up through the individual leaves of the manuscript. Up to 35 images per sequence per leaf are imaged this way using a high-powered digital camera equipped with a lens which is made out of quartz. There are about five of these in the world. And once we capture these images, we feed them through statistical algorithms to further enhance and clarify them, using software which was originally designed for satellite images and used by people like geospatial scientists and the CIA.
那到底多光譜造像要怎麼做? 首先,多光譜造像背後的想法 是每個戴過紅外線夜視鏡的人 都熟悉的原理, 馬上就能理解: 我們在可見光譜中可以看到的 只是實景的一小部分。 看不見的筆跡也一樣。 我們的機器使用 12 道光波長, 介於紫外線和紅外線之間, 這些光從上方這些 LED 燈 照在手稿上, 另一個多光譜光源 從每張手稿下朝上照射出。 每次每頁最多可連續 造出 35 張影像, 運用高功率數位相機 和一顆用石英做的鏡頭, 全世界大概有五顆。 只要我們捕捉到影像, 就透過統計演算法, 進一步強化、辨析, 搭配的軟體是 原先設計給衛星影像、 地理空間科學家 和中央情報局使用的。
The results can be spectacular. You may already have heard of what's been done for the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are slowly gelatinizing. Using infrared, we've been able to read even the darkest corners of the Dead Sea Scrolls. You may not be aware, however, of other Biblical texts that are in jeopardy.
結果可能非常驚人。 也許你聽過先例 《死海古卷》的成果, 現在這卷書快糊掉了。 透過紅外線,我們甚至可以看清 《死海古卷》最不清楚的角落。 不過你可能會注意到 其它聖經文本也處於險境。
Here, for example, is a leaf from a manuscript that we imaged, which is perhaps the most valuable Christian Bible in the world. The Codex Vercellensis is the oldest translation of the Gospels into Latin, and it dates from the first half of the fourth century. This is the closest we can come to the Bible at the time of the foundation of Christendom under Emperor Constantine, and at the time also of the Council of Nicaea, when the basic creed of Christianity was being agreed upon. This manuscript, unfortunately, has been very badly damaged, and it's damaged because for centuries it had been used and handled in swearing in ceremonies in the church. In fact, that purple splotch that you see in the upper left hand corner is Aspergillus, which is a fungus which originates in the unwashed hands of a person with tuberculosis. Our imaging has enabled me to make the first transcription of this manuscript in 250 years.
例如這一頁手稿, 我們已經造像, 這大概是世界上最珍貴的聖經。 《韋爾切利拉丁抄本》是世界上最早 譯為拉丁文的福音書, 可追溯到四世紀上半葉。 這本聖經的年代是最接近 君士坦丁大帝以基督教立國, 以及尼西亞會議 對基督教基本教義 取得一致意見的時期。 很不幸這份抄本已嚴重受損, 而且受損是因為幾世紀以來, 世代人們手持著它 在教堂儀式中宣誓。 其實,你在左上角看到的 這塊紫色污點 是麴菌,這種真菌 來自肺結核患者未洗淨的雙手。 我們造的影像, 讓我可以為此抄本製作出 250 年來第一份副本。
Having a lab that can travel to collections where it's needed, however, is only part of the solution. The technology is expensive and very rare, and the imaging and image processing skills are esoteric. That means that mounting recoveries is beyond the reach of most researchers and all but the wealthiest institutions. That's why I founded the Lazarus Project, a not-for-profit initiative to bring multispectral imaging to individual researchers and smaller institutions at little or no cost whatsoever. Over the past five years, our team of imaging scientists, scholars and students has travelled to seven different countries and have recovered some of the world's most valuable damaged manuscripts, included the Vercelli Book, which is the oldest book of English, the Black Book of Carmarthen, the oldest book of Welsh, and some of the most valuable earliest Gospels located in what is now the former Soviet Georgia.
有一間能移動到文物收藏處的實驗室 其實只是解決方法的一部分。 這項科技昂貴又稀有, 造像和影像的製成技術 也鮮為人知。 這代表了要復原文物 是大多數學者辦不到的, 只有有錢機構能做到。 這就是為什麼我籌備拉撒路計畫, (註:起死回生之意) 這項非營利倡議 將多光譜造像帶給個別的研究員 以及小型機構, 只需少許費用或根本不要錢。 過去五年來, 我的團隊, 包含造像科學家、學者和學生, 前往七個國家 復原了幾件世界極珍貴的受損手搞, 包含《韋爾切利手抄本》, 最古老的英文書; 《卡馬森的黑皮書》, 最古老的威爾斯文書; 以及幾件最珍貴古老的福音書, 藏身在前蘇聯的喬治亞。
So, spectral imaging can recover lost texts. More subtly, though, it can recover a second story behind every object, the story of how, when and by whom a text was created, and, sometimes, what the author was thinking at the time he wrote. Take, for example, a draft of the Declaration of Independence written in Thomas Jefferson's own hand, which some colleagues of mine imaged a few years ago at the Library of Congress. Curators had noticed that one word throughout had been scratched out and overwritten. The word overwritten was "citizens." Perhaps you can guess what the word underneath was. "Subjects." There, ladies and gentlemen, is American democracy evolving under the hand of Thomas Jefferson.
因此多光譜造像 可以復原很多遺失的文字。 而且更巧妙的是能夠復原 隱身在每個文物背後的第二個故事, 關於文本創作的原因、 時間和人物的故事, 有時候還能復原 作者書寫時的想法。 例如,這份《美國獨立宣言》草稿 由湯瑪斯.傑佛遜親手寫下, 這是由我的幾位同事數年前 在國會圖書館造的像。 館長發現有一個字在整篇裡 不斷被擦去又覆寫。 這個被覆寫的字是「公民」。 也許你能猜出底下原本的字。 「臣民」。 各位女士、先生,美國的民主 在湯瑪斯.傑佛遜之手下展開了。
Or consider the 1491 Martellus Map, which we imaged at Yale's Beinecke Library. This was the map that Columbus likely consulted before he traveled to the New World and which gave him his idea of what Asia looked like and where Japan was located. The problem with this map is that its inks and pigments had so degraded over time that this large, nearly seven-foot map, made the world look like a giant desert. Until now, we had very little idea, detailed idea, that is, of what Columbus knew of the world and how world cultures were represented. The main legend of the map was entirely illegible under normal light. Ultraviolet did very little for it. Multispectral gave us everything. In Asia, we learned of monsters with ears so long that they could cover the creature's entire body. In Africa, about a snake who could cause the ground to smoke. Like starlight, which can convey images of the way the Universe looked in the distant past, so multispectral light can take us back to the first stuttering moments of an object's creation. Through this lens, we witness the mistakes, the changes of mind, the naïvetés, the uncensored thoughts, the imperfections of the human imagination that allow these hallowed objects and their authors to become more real, that make history closer to us.
或是想想 1491 年馬提勒斯的地圖, 我們在耶魯 拜內克古籍善本圖書館造了像。 當年哥倫布就是先查了這份地圖, 才到新世界航行, 這份地圖帶給他對亞洲的印象, 以及日本所在位置的概念。 這地圖的問題在於上面的墨料 經年累月褪色得嚴重, 以至於這張大約七呎的地圖 讓世界看起來像巨大的沙漠。 直到現在, 我們對它的細節仍所知甚少, 不了解哥倫布所知的世界 以及當時的世界文化如何被展現。 地圖上的說明在一般燈光下 完全看不見。 紫外線的幫助非常有限。 多光譜帶給我們完整的面貌。 在亞洲,我們看到怪獸 有非常長的耳朵, 可以覆蓋自己的全身。 在非洲,有條蛇可以讓土地冒煙。 就像星光可以傳達出 遠古時期的宇宙影像一樣, 多光譜燈光也能帶我們回到 文物被創造之際, 作者躊躇不已的第一現場。 透過這個鏡頭,我們目睹了 錯誤、改變心意、 天真、未拘束的想法, 人類想像力的不完美 允許這些神聖的文物和創作者 變得更真實, 讓歷史更接近我們。
What about the future? There's so much of the past, and so few people with the skills to rescue it before these objects disappear forever. That's why I have begun to teach this new hybrid discipline that I call "textual science." Textual science is a marriage of the traditional skills of a literary scholar -- the ability to read old languages and old handwriting, the knowledge of how texts are made in order to be able to place and date them -- with new techniques like imaging science, the chemistry of inks and pigments, computer-aided optical character recognition.
那麼未來呢? 過去如此長遠, 很少人有這些技術 趕在這些文物消逝之前 拯救過往。 這也是為什麼我開始教 這項新的混合學科, 我稱為「原文科學」。 原文科學是場婚姻,結合 文學學者的傳統技術── 閱讀古語和古文的能力, 了解原文如何製成的知識, 以此來追溯時地── 以及新技術,像是造像科學、 墨料科學、 電腦輔助的光學字元辨識。
Last year, a student in my class, a freshman, with a background in Latin and Greek, was image-processing a palimpsest that we had photographed at a famous library in Rome. As he worked, tiny Greek writing began to appear from behind the text. Everyone gathered around, and he read a line from a lost work of the Greek comic dramatist Menander. This was the first time in well over a thousand years that those words had been pronounced aloud. In that moment, he became a scholar.
去年,我班上的一位學生, 大一生, 有拉丁和希臘血統, 他為一張羊皮紙造影, 那是我們在羅馬的知名博物館 照相的羊皮紙。 經過他努力後,小小的希臘文筆跡 開始顯現在文字背後。 大家靠過去看, 他唸了一行 希臘喜劇家米南德遺失的作品。 這是上千年來第一次, 那些文字被大聲朗誦出。 在那一刻,他成為了學者。
Ladies and gentlemen, that is the future of the past.
各位女士、先生, 這是過去的未來。
Thank you very much.
非常謝謝大家。
(Applause)
(掌聲)