A Remarkable Collection of Babylonian Mathematical Texts

A bout 120 new Mesopotamian mathematical cuneiform texts, all from the Norwegian Schøyen Collection, are published in the author’s book A Remarkable Collection of Babylonian Mathematical Texts, Springer (2007). Most of the texts are Old Babylonian (1900–1600 BC), but some are older (Sumerian), or younger (Kassite). In addition to the presentation and discussion of these new texts, the book contains a broad and fairly thorough account of important aspects of Mesopotamian mathematics in general, from its beginnings in the late 4th millennium BC till its last manifestations in the late 1st millennium BC.1 The present paper contains brief presentations of a selection of interesting mathematical cuneiform texts in the Schøyen Collection (tablet numbers beginning with MS). Actually, the subcollection of mathematical cuneiform texts in the Schøyen Collection is so extensive that it is possible to use examples from it to follow in detail the progress of Old Babylonian scribe school students in handwriting and computational ability from the first year student’s elementary multiplication exercises written with large and clumsy number signs to the accomplished model student’s advanced mathematical problem texts written in a sure hand and with almost microscopically small cuneiform signs. A beginner’s multiplication exercises with large number signs. Figure 1 shows an example of a young student’s multiplication exercises, beginning with the computation, in terms of sexagesimal numbers in floating place value notation, of the product 50 ​×​45 ​= ​37 30. (The corresponding result in decimal numbers is, of course, 50 ​×​45 ​= ​2,​250 ​= ​37 ​×​60 ​+​30.) Note that there was no cuneiform number sign for zero, but instead there were separate number signs for the ones, from 1 to 9 (upright wedges), and for the tens, from 10 to 50 (oblique wedges). In the transliteration to modern number signs (to the left in Figure 1) the tens are written with a little circle in the upper right corner.