日本語訳を! 1-(1)
お願いします。
Imagine you are the king of Egypt. Strut about a bit, you can. After all, you're the supreme ruler―the Pharaoh, the Great One. You command armies. If you say fight, they fight to the death. You have thousands of servants―a few just to fan you with ostrich feathers when you're feeling a tad overheated. Your brothers and sisters, parents, teachers, and friends have to do what you order. YOU have inherited the right to make laws and dole out punishments. They had better behave. When you walk by, people fall to their knees and press their noses into the dirt. Some tremble when you pass―who knows what you might say to the gods the next time you speak to them? The crops grow because you say so. The Great River flows because you convince the gods it must. Now imagine wielding all that power when you are only six years old. That's how old you would be if you were the Pharaoh Pepi II in Egypt 4,000 years ago.
If you were Pepi II, your kingdom would have looked a lot like the barren, red landscape of Mars if it weren't for one thing―the Great River, a river we now call the Nile. Flowing north, the Nile cuts throtgh the deshret, or the red land. Limestone cliffs rise above the river like castle walls. The ancient Egyptians said the gods put those cliffs there to protect them. In fact, your entire kingdom is surrounded by natural barriers that protect it. To the east and west, the desert keeps out invaders. To the north, before the Nile dumps into the sea, it branches out into a triangle of marshland we call the Delta (it would be hard for your enemies to march through a swamp). And to the south the Nile protects your kingdom again, this time with a series of rocky rapids called the Cataracts.
