Old Babylonian "hand tablet" illustrating Pythagoras' Theorem and an approximation of the square root of two. Clay, 19th-17th century BCE. Yale Babylonian Collection YBC 7289. Photo: West Semitic Research.
Posted on 11/20/2010 6:43:57 AM PST by SunkenCiv
An illuminating exhibition of thirteen ancient Babylonian tablets, along with supplemental documentary material, opens at New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) on November 12, 2010. Before Pythagoras: The Culture of Old Babylonian Mathematics reveals the highly sophisticated mathematical practice and education that flourished in Babylonia -- present-day Iraq -- more than 1,000 years before the time of the Greek sages Thales and Pythagoras, with whom mathematics is traditionally said to have begun.
The tablets in the exhibition, at once beautiful and enlightening, date from the Old Babylonian Period (ca. 1900-1700 BCE). They have been assembled from three important collections: the Columbia Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University; the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology; and the Yale Babylonian Collection, Yale University.
Before Pythagoras has been curated by Alexander Jones, ISAW Professor of the History of the Exact Sciences in Antiquity, and ISAW visiting scholar Christine Proust, historian of mathematics and ancient sciences at the Institut Méditerranéen de Recherches Avancées, in Marseille. The exhibition remains on view at ISAW through December 17, 2010.
(Excerpt) Read more at artdaily.org ...
Old Babylonian "hand tablet" illustrating Pythagoras' Theorem and an approximation of the square root of two. Clay, 19th-17th century BCE. Yale Babylonian Collection YBC 7289. Photo: West Semitic Research.
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You would think intellectuals at a prestigious university would know how to spell a date.
BCE = Before the Coo-coo Era
BCE = Before Common Era
It used to be BC, Before Christ but you know how people are. They want to wipe the expression of Christ off the earth.
To be perfectly fair, the region continued to flourish for almost 500 years under Muslim rule.
The real decline began in 1258 with the Mongol conquest.
I suspect the failure to bounce back as the region had from previous conquests had a lot to do with Islam, and in particular with the gradual conversion of many of the Christians and Zoroastrians of the region, but Islam did not of itself cause an immediate decline in the region.
The writing on the tablet says, “This is how square peg put into round hole”.
Just in case anybody can’t read cuneiform....the number on the diagonal in the upper left quadrant is 30. The numbers in the middle, left to right, top line: 1,24,51,10, and bottom line: 42, 25, 35.
EVERYONE! Start scratching 3,4,5 into anything you can get your hands on. Shine a ray of light on the people of the future!!
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Babylonian_Pythagoras.html
This might clear things up better. They were using base 60, so it doesn’t make a whole lotta sense if you don’t!
Is their a big demand for cuneiform technicians?
Whom can I sue?
Maybe not, but when you just gotta have one, there are NO good substitutes!
I thought that was a wad of gum.......had one on the bottom of my shoe once that looked just like that.
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