La science égyptienne: l'arithmétique au moyen empire

Abstract

“HABENT sua fata libelli.” The most valuable original document representing the ancient Egyptian mathematics is still the Papyrus Rhind in the British Museum. This papyrus was written at some time between 1788 and 1580 B.C. by a scribe called Ahmes, Ahmesu, or Ahmose, who says that he copied it from an earlier document, to which we may assign a date as early as 1842 to 1801 B.C. Whether it is a pupil's notebook or rather (as M. Gillain suggests) a book of exercises put together for his own amusement by some amateur who was drawing upon his recollections of study at school, but had at hand for reference some manual from which he could make extracts at will, it contains nothing but quite elementary matter, and is, moreover, disfigured by mistakes which show that the scribe at any rate was no mathematician. Yet (while advanced works such as the Porisms of Euclid have perished) fate has preserved this book, and after some 3700 years it is still being actively discussed (it is true that it was only acquired by A. H. Rhind at Luxor in 1858 and was not published until 1874). M. Gillain's bibliography contains the titles of between forty and fifty books or memoirs dealing with Egyptian mathematics in general or the Rhind Papyrus in particular; and opinions are still sharply divided.

La science égyptienne: l'arithmétique au moyen empire.

Par O. Gillain. Pp. xvi + 326. (Bruxelles: Reine Elisabeth, 1927.) n.p.