纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 062希伯来星盘（4）
时间：2023-01-09 06:16:20
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（单词翻译）
At first sight this astrolabe looks like an outsized old-fashioned pocket watch with an entirely1 brass2 face. It sits easily in my hand - in fact it fills it - and it's a gleaming assemblage of interlocking brass-work, with five wafer-thin discs, one on top of another, held together by a central pin. On top of this are a number of pointers that you can line up with various symbols on the discs, and this will give you astronomical3 readings, or help you determine your position. An astrolabe like this one is designed for the particular latitude4 in which it is going to be used. The five discs here will allow you to get an accurate reading from any position between the latitudes5 of the Pyrenees and North Africa. In the middle of the range are the latitudes for the Spanish cities of Seville and Toledo.
And that tells me that this astrolabe was almost certainly made for somebody based in Spain, who might travel between North Africa and France. And what's written on the astrolabe tells us pretty clearly what kind of person must have been using it. It tells us that the owner is Jewish, and is learned. Silke Ackermann, the curator of scientific instruments here at the British Museum, has spent a lot of time on the astrolabe's inscriptions6:
一眼望去，这块星盘像是一块超大号的老式纯黄铜面怀表。它闪闪发亮，各部件间紧密相扣，五个超薄圆盘层层相叠，中央穿过一根细针将其固定。表层有数根指针，和圆盘上的各种符号相对后会显示出一些天文读数，或是帮助你判断现处方位。星盘是根据目标地区的纬度特别设计的。这五个圆盘能让你了解纬度从比利牛斯山脉到北非之间任何位置的精确数据。这一纬度范围包括了西班牙城市塞维利亚和托莱多。
我们据此得知，这块星盘是为一位居住在西班牙的人设计制作的，他可能曾往返于北非与法国。星盘上的文字告诉我们，他是一位受过良好教育的犹太人。
大英博物馆科学器械管理员西尔克·阿克曼博士仔细研究了这块星盘：
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