Mathematics in Ancient Egypt: A Contextual History by Annette Imhausen (PDF)

Description

A survey of ancient Egyptian mathematics across three thousand yearsMathematics in Ancient Egypt traces the development of Egyptian mathematics, from the end of the fourth millennium BC—and the earliest hints of writing and number notation—to the end of the pharaonic period in Greco-Roman times. Drawing from mathematical texts, architectural drawings, administrative documents, and other sources, Annette Imhausen surveys three thousand years of Egyptian history to present an integrated picture of theoretical mathematics in relation to the daily practices of Egyptian life and social structures.Imhausen shows that from the earliest beginnings, pharaonic civilization used numerical techniques to efficiently control and use their material resources and labor. Even during the Old Kingdom, a variety of metrological systems had already been devised. By the Middle Kingdom, procedures had been established to teach mathematical techniques to scribes in order to make them proficient administrators for their king. Imhausen looks at counterparts to the notation of zero, suggests an explanation for the evolution of unit fractions, and analyzes concepts of arithmetic techniques. She draws connections and comparisons to Mesopotamian mathematics, examines which individuals in Egyptian society held mathematical knowledge, and considers which scribes were trained in mathematical ideas and why.Of interest to historians of mathematics, mathematicians, Egyptologists, and all those curious about Egyptian culture, Mathematics in Ancient Egypt sheds new light on a civilization’s unique mathematical evolution.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This is a useful book for someone studying ancient Egyptian mathematics. But it is short and spends too many of its few pages cavilling with the work of earlier scholars like Chace, Neugebauer, Vogel, Parker, Gillings, and Clagett. The context that I think is helpful for the history of mathematics is how numbers and mathematics are used. One of the examples of this presented by Imhausen is the account of temple endowments in the Papyrus Harris I. But the large quotes from scribes about how they served the pharaoh are impersonally written so don’t make the scribes seem much more real, and they don’t tell me anything substantial about mathematics, and thus I think these are not useful enough as context to be worth taking space in a short book.I think that the best way to study ancient arithmetic is through weights and measures: you quickly see proto-number theory emerge when you do calculations with ancient Greek units of length like the stadion (600 feet), plethron (100 feet), orgyia (6 feet), schoinos (40 stadia), foot (16 daktyloi), pechys=cubit (24 daktyloi), etc. (These ratios might in fact be different in different cities and times.) I think that a comprehensive sourcebook of translations of Egyptian texts involving weights and measures with commentary would be a far greater contribution to the literature than exhortations about prior historians of mathematics ignoring social context and using modern notation that does not fully model Egyptian mathematics; in the first few pages of the book Imhausen even uses the professional academic’s jargon word “problematic”. If prior historians have ignored social context, don’t talk about how they ignored social context, just give the social context! And be comprehensive about it, not just giving a few excerpts unlike Chace, Neugebauer, Parker and Clagett who translated large texts.Although one won’t thoroughly learn Egyptian mathematics from this book, it has a comprehensive list of extant mathematical texts, gives some helpful commentary, and cites the more important modern writers. Certainly if I work on any projects involving ancient Egyptian mathematics I will use Imhausen’s book.

⭐Well written and up to date in a subject where there has been little new information for nearly a century. However what is more recent relates to the possible links between Ancient Egyptian and Babylonian Mathematics and Imhausen is proficient in both.You might also be interested in THE HISTORICAL ROOTS OF ELEMENTARY MATHEMATICS a very reasonably priced Dover publication.

⭐Tout est conforme à l’annonce, vraiment Super merci. Vendeur à recommander.

⭐

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