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Mathematics in Mesopotamia

Mathematics in Mesopotamia. MATH 110-2 – Algebra Through History September, 2019. Historical Orientation. We are now ready to begin our historical study of where the algebra you have learned originally “came from”

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Mathematics in Mesopotamia

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  1. Mathematics in Mesopotamia • MATH 110-2 – Algebra Through History • September, 2019

  2. Historical Orientation • We are now ready to begin our historical study of where the algebra you have learned originally “came from” • “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there” (from a novel by modern British author L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between) • Today, we'll start that with a bit of orientation (in location and time) for the Mesopotamian civilizations

  3. Ancient Mesopotamia • the ``land between the rivers'' – Tigris and Euphrates – mostly contained in current countries of Iraq, Iran, Syria.

  4. A very long history • ~5500 BCE -- First village settlements in the South • ~3500 - 2800 BCE -- Sumerian city-state period, first pictographic texts • ~3300 - 3100 BCE -- first cuneiform writing • created with a reed stylus on a wet clay tablet, then sometimes baked in an oven to set • combined with a pretty dry climate, these records are very durable!

  5. Concentrate on southern area • ~2800 - 2320 BCE -- Early Dynastic Period, Old Sumerian literature • ~2320 - 2180 BCE -- Akkadian (Sumerian) empire, first real centralized government • ~2000 BCE -- collapse of remnant of Sumerian empire • ~2000 - 1600 BCE -- Ammorite kingdom "Old Babylonian Period"-- Hammurabi Code, mathematics texts, editing of Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh

  6. Later history • This part of the world has been fought over and conquered repeatedly – most recently, of course, in the two Iraq wars of the 1990's and 2000's CE – a very complicated story! • Also figures in Biblical history (“Babylonian captivity” of Jewish people) • 612 - 539 BCE -- “New Babylonian” period (Nebuchadnezzar) height of Babylonian astronomy • Later we'll see Baghdad was a world center of learning during “dark ages” in Europe

  7. Cuneiform writing • Different combinations of up-down and sideways wedges were used to represent syllables • Was used to represent many different spoken languages over a long period – 1000 years + • Also used to represent numbers, eventually (and definitely in the period we'll concentrate on), in a positional, base-60 notation, but without a zero symbol

  8. A tablet with cuneiform writing Note the limited collection of forms you can make with a wedge-shaped stylus:

  9. Cuneiform number symbols

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