versions without explaining any one of them. Two of the "Four papyri" here considered are in the Berlin Museum numbered 9784, 9785; the other two are discussed in Griffith (1897) among the Gurob legal documents.
Hilprecht, H. V., Mathematical, Metrological and Chronological Tablets from the Temple Library of Nippur, (Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, series A: Cuneiform Texts, vol. 20, part 1), Philadelphia, 1906. 18 + 70 pp. + 45 plates.
A study of fifty mathematical tablets illustrating Babylonian mathematics. Hilprecht assigns approximate dates to all of these tablets, 1 about 2400 B. C., 1 about 2350, 25 about 2200, 1 about 2000 and 22 about 1350 B. C. Present day scholarship calls for a later dating of the first 28 of these tablets. The date "c. 2200" was evidently fixed by Hilprecht as "the period of the first dynasty of Isin" (p. 10). Meissner (1925), p. 445 and British Museum. A Guide to the Babylonian and Assyrian Antiquities, third edition, London, 1922, p. 245, agree in fixing the period of this dynasty as about 2180-1960 B. C., the mean of which 2070 is therefore to be substituted for 2200. On the basis of similar considerations I substitute 2200 for 2400, 2150 for 2350, and 1800 for 2000.
Thirty of the plates contain hand copies of 48 of the tablets; 10 more give phototype reproduction of 13 of these. Four more plates present photo- type reproductions of both sides of two other tablets. The oldest of these tablets, 10201, in the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, contains divisions of 12,960,000 which is connected (pp. 29-34) with Plato's famous "geometrical number."
Review by D. E. Smith, "The mathematical tablets of Nippur," Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 13, 1907, pp. 392-398.
Other papers with features of interest to the students of Babylonian mathematics are: F. Thureau-Dangin, "L'u, le qa et la mine, leur mesure et leur rapport," Journal Asiatique, series 10, vol. 13, 1909, pp. 79-111 + 1 plate; F. Thureau-Dangin, "Numération et métrolologie sumériennes," Revue d'Assyriologie et d'Archéologie Orientale, vol. 18, 1921, pp. 123-142; H. F. Lutz, "A mathematical cuneiform tablet," The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, vol. 36, 1920, pp. 249-257. This last mentioned tablet is CBS8536 in the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania;[1] for an article based on that by Lutz see F. Cajori, "Sexagesimal fractions among the Babylonians," American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 29, 1922, pp. 8-10. Another recent article is by Q. Vetter, "Babylonské nésobeni a déleni," Časopis pro Pěstowini Matematiky e Fysiky, vol. 51, 1922, pp. 271-278; French synopsis, "Multiplication et division babyloniennes," pp. 334-336; slightly revised as "La moltiplicazione e la divisione babilonese" Archivio di Storia della Scienza, vol. 4, 1923, pp. 233-240; based on Hilprecht (1903, 1906), Sethe (1916), and Zimmern (1916). Many earlier references are given by Hilprecht; the accounts of Babylonian mathematics in the three editions of Cantor's Vorlesungen,
- ↑ In this document dating back to about 1900 B. C. we find among many multiplications that of 444⁄9 by itself and the result is correctly given as 197525⁄81, the 25⁄81 being expressed in terms of fractions with 60 in the denominator. Sumerians would write 22⁄27 as (441⁄31⁄9)/60.
