Overview
- Provides a thorough and easy-to-read account of the history of mathematics in Mesopotamia, covering three millennia
- Examines previously unpublished mathematical Mesopotamian cuneiform texts from the archives of the British Museum (London), the Iraq Museum (Baghdad) and the Sulaymaniyah Museum (Kurdistan)
- Contains numerous line drawings and hand copies/photos of mathematical cuneiform exercise texts and numerical tables
Part of the book series: Sources and Studies in the History of Mathematics and Physical Sciences (SHMP)
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Table of contents (14 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
Focussing on the big picture, Friberg explores in this book several Late Babylonian arithmetical and metro-mathematical table texts from the sites of Babylon, Uruk and Sippar, collections of mathematical exercises from four Old Babylonian sites, as well as a new text from Early Dynastic/Early Sargonic Umma, which is the oldest known collection of mathematical exercises. A table of reciprocals from the end of the third millennium BC, differing radically from well-documented but younger tables of reciprocals from the Neo-Sumerian and Old-Babylonian periods, as well as a fragment of a Neo-Sumerian clay tablet showing a new type of a labyrinth are also discussed. The material is presented in the form of photos, hand copies, transliterations and translations, accompanied by exhaustive explanations. The previously unpublished mathematical cuneiform texts presented in this book were discovered by Farouk Al-Rawi, who also made numerous beautiful hand copies of most of the clay tablets.
Historians of mathematics and the Mesopotamian civilization, linguists and those interested in ancient labyrinths will find New Mathematical Cuneiform Texts particularly valuable. The book contains many texts of previously unknown types and material that is not available elsewhere.
Reviews
“New Mathematical Cuneiform Texts must now be added to the small body of books that are indispensable to specialists in cuneiform mathematics.” (Christine Proust, Isis, Vol. 111 (1), 2020)
Authors and Affiliations
About the authors
Farouk Al-Rawi, former head of the Department of Archaeology at Baghdad University, is presently associated with the School of Oriental and African studies, University of London, UK, as Professor of Ancient Languages and Archaeology. He is the (co-)author of numerous works and is particularly known for the presentation of the important Old Babylonian mathematical cuneiform text Haddad 104, which he has written together with M. Roaf and which appeared in Sumer 43 (1984).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: New Mathematical Cuneiform Texts
Authors: Jöran Friberg, Farouk N.H. Al-Rawi
Series Title: Sources and Studies in the History of Mathematics and Physical Sciences
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44597-7
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Mathematics and Statistics, Mathematics and Statistics (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-44596-0Published: 24 February 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-83090-2Published: 18 July 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-44597-7Published: 13 February 2017
Series ISSN: 2196-8810
Series E-ISSN: 2196-8829
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVII, 553
Number of Illustrations: 232 b/w illustrations, 1 illustrations in colour
Topics: History of Mathematical Sciences, Semitic Languages, Popular Science in Mathematics