The book analyzes the mathematical tablets from the private collection of Martin Schoyen. It includes analyses of tablets which have never been studied before. This provides new insight into Babylonian understanding of sophisticated mathematical objects. The book is carefully written and organized. The tablets are classified according to mathematical content and purpose, while drawings and pictures are provided for the most interesting tablets.

This monograph presents in great detail a large number of both unpublished and previously published Babylonian mathematical texts in the cuneiform script. It is a continuation of the work A Remarkable Collection of Babylonian Mathematical Texts (Springer 2007) written by Jöran Friberg, the leading expert on Babylonian mathematics. 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 The previously unpublished mathematical cuneiform texts presented in this book were discovered by Farouk Al-Rawi, who also made numerous beautiful hand copies of most of the clay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.

Mesopotamian mathematics is known from a great number of cuneiform texts, most of them Old Babyonian, some Late Babylonian or pre-Old-Babylonian, and has been intensively studied during the last couple of decades. In contrast to this Egyptian mathematics is known from only a small number of papyrus texts, and the few books and papers that have been written about Egyptian mathematical papyri have mostly reiterated the same old interpretations and presentations of the texts. In this book, it is shown that the methods developed by the author for the close study of mathematical cuneiform texts can also be successfully applied to all kinds of Egyptian mathematical texts, hieratic, demotic, or Greek-Egyptian. At the same time, comparisons of a large number of individual Egyptian mathematical exercises with Babylonian parallels yield many new insights into the nature of Egyptian mathematics and show that Egyptian and Babylonian mathematics display greater similarities than expected.

This book contains new translations and a new analysis of the procedure texts of Babylonian mathematical astronomy, the earliest known form of mathematical astronomy of the ancient world. The translations are based on a modern approach incorporating recent insights from Assyriology and translation science. The work contains updated and expanded interpretations of the astronomical algorithms and investigations of previously ignored linguistic, mathematical and other aspects of the procedure texts. Special attention is paid to issues of mathematical representation and over 100 photos of cuneiform tablets dating from 350-50 BCE are presented. In 2-3 years, the author intends to continue his study of Babylonian mathematical astronomy with a new publication which will contain new editions and reconstructions of approx. 250 tabular texts and a new philological, astronomical and mathematical analysis of these texts. Tabular texts are end products of Babylonian math astronomy, computed with algorithms that are formulated in the present volume, Procedure Texts.

A sequel to Unexpected Links Between Egyptian and Babylonian Mathematics (World Scientific, 2005), this book is based on the authorOCOs intensive and ground breaking studies of the long history of Mesopotamian mathematics, from the late 4th to the late 1st millennium BC. It is argued in the book that several of the most famous Greek mathematicians appear to have been familiar with various aspects of Babylonian OC metric algebra, OCO a convenient name for an elaborate combination of geometry, metrology, and quadratic equations that is known from both Babylonian and pre-Babylonian mathematical clay tablets. The bookOCOs use of OC metric algebra diagramsOCO in the Babylonian style, where the side lengths and areas of geometric figures are explicitly indicated, instead of wholly abstract OC lettered diagramsOCO in the Greek style, is essential for an improved understanding of many interesting propositions and constructions in Greek mathematical works. The authorOCOs comparisons with Babylonian mathematics also lead to new answers to some important open questions in the history of Greek mathematics."

This 8-hour free course taught how historians have deciphered stone tablets and studied Babylonian techniques for problem-solving and teaching.

This work offers a re-edition of twelve mathematical tablets from the site of Tell Harmal, in the borders of present-day Baghdad. In ancient times, Tell Harmal was Šaduppûm, a city representative of the region of the Diyala river and of the kingdom of Ešnunna, to which it belonged for a time. These twelve tablets were originally published in separate articles in the beginning of the 1950s and mostly contain solved problem texts. Some of the problems deal with abstract matters such as triangles and rectangles with no reference to daily life, while others are stated in explicitly empirical contexts, such as the transportation of a load of bricks, the size of a vessel, the number of men needed to build a wall and the acquisition of oil and lard. This new edition of the texts is the first to group them, and takes into account all the recent developments of the research in the history of Mesopotamian mathematics. Its introductory chapters are directed to readers interested in an overview of the mathematical contents of these tablets and the language issues involved in their interpretation, while a chapter of synthesis discusses the ways history of mathematics has typically dealt with the mathematical evidence and inquires how and to what degree mathematical tablets can be made part of a picture of the larger social context. Furthermore, the volume contributes to a geography of the Old Babylonian mathematical practices, by evidencing that scribes at Šaduppûm made use of cultural material that was locally available. The edited texts are accompanied by translations, philological, and mathematical commentaries.