Babylonian

mathematics
Eleanor Robson
University of Cambridge

Outline

Introducing ourselves
Going to school in ancient Babylonia
Learning about Babylonian shapes
Learning about Babylonian numbers
Question time

Who were the

Babylonians?
Where did they live?
When did they live?
What were their lives like?

We live
here

and
here

The Babylonians
lived here, 50002000 years ago

Babylonia, 19001650 BC
Cities and writing for
1500 years already
Brick-built cities on
rivers and canals
Wealth through
farming: barley and
sheep
Central temples, to
worship many gods
King Hammurabi
(17921750 BC)
Most children didnt
go to school

Babylonian men
and women

Cuneiform writing
Wedges on clay

Whole words
Syllables
Word types
600 different signs

Sumerian language
No known relatives

Akkadian language

Related to Hebrew, Arabic,

and other modern Middle
Eastern languages

Cuneiform objects

Professional scribes
Employed by:

Temples
Palaces
Courts of law
Rich families

Status:

Slaves
Senior officials
Nobility

In order to write:
Receipts and lists
Monthly and annual
accounts
Loans, rentals, and sales
Marriage contracts,
dowries, and wills
Royal inscriptions
Records of legal disputes
Letters

Im an archaeologist
of maths
Archaeology is the study of rubbish
To discover how people lived and died
To discover how people made and used
objects to work with and think with

Doing maths leaves a trail of rubbish

behind
I study the mathematical rubbish of
the ancient Babylonians

Imagine an earthquake
destroys your school in
the middle of the night
An archaeologist comes to your
school 500 years from now
What mathematical things might she
find in your school?
What would they tell her about the
maths you do?

Some mathematical
things in modern schools
Text books and exercise books
Scrap paper and doodles
Mathematical instruments from
rulers to calculators
Mathematical displays from models
to posters
Computer files and hardware

But isnt maths the

same everywhere?
Two different ways of thinking about
maths:
Maths is discovered, like fossils
Its history is just about who discovered
what, and when

Maths is created by people, like

language

Its history is about who thought and

used what, and why

The archaeology of
Babylonian maths
Tablets dont rot
like paper or
papyrus do
They got lost,

thrown away,
or re-used
Archaeologists
dig them up just
like pots, bones or
buildings

Looking at things in
context tells us far
more than studying
single objects
What sort of people
wrote those tablets
and why?

The ancient city of Nippur

Maths at school:
House F
A small house in Nippur,
10m x 5m
Dug by archaeologists in 1951
Used as a school in the 1740s
BC nearly 4000 years ago!
1400 fragments of tablets
with school exercises
Tablets now in Chicago,
Philadelphia, and Baghdad

Tablet recycling bin

Kitchen with oven
Room for a few students

The House F curriculum

Wedges and signs
Peoples names
Words for things (wood,
reed, stone, metal, )
How cuneiform writing
works
Weights, measures,
and multiplications
Whole sentences
Sayings and proverbs
Stories, myths, hymns
to gods

Was Babylonian maths

so different from ours?
Draw or imagine a triangle

Two Babylonian triangles

Cultural preferences
Horizontal base
Vertical axis of symmetry
Equilateral

Left-hand vertical edge

Hanging right-angled triangle
or horizontal axis of symmetry
Elongated

A Babylonian maths book

front

back

What are these shapes?

The side of the square
is 60 rods. Inside it are:
o 4 triangles,
o 16 barges,
o 5 cow's noses.

What are their areas?

"Triangle" is actually santakkum

"cuneiform wedge" and doesn't
have to have straight edges

Barge and cows nose

What names would you

give these shapes?

Babylonian numbers
Different: cuneiform signs pressed into
clay
Vertical wedges 19
Arrow wedges 1050

Different: no zero and no decimal point

Different/same: in base 60
What do we still count in base 60?

Same: order matters

Place value systems

1 30
1

30

Base 10 equivalent

1 x 60 = 60 3 x 10 = 30 60 + 30 = 90
1

30/60 = 1/2 1 + 1/2 = 1 1/2

1 x 3600 =
3600

30 x 60 =
1800

3600 + 1800 =
5400

Babylonian numbers
Try to
write:

32
23
18
81
167
4 1/2

Think of a number for your friend to write.

Did they do it right?

 32
23
18
81 = 60 + 21
167 = 120 + 47
4 1/2 = 4 + 30/60

Multiplication tables

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
[12]
13

30
1
1 30
2
2 30
3
3 30
4
4 30
5
5 30
6
6 30

 continued

[14
[15
16
17
18
20-1
20
30
40
50

7]
7 30]
[8]
[8 30]
9
9 30
10
15
20
25

Questions