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The Rhind PapyrusThe Greatest Surviving Example of Egyptian Mathematics
The Rhind Papyrus is perhaps the best known demonstration of the mathematics of ancient Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period.
This magnificent archaeological find - now named for the Englishman Alexander Henry Rhind, who purchased it in 1858 after its discovery in Luxor, Egypt - consists of a single scroll, about 18 and one half inches long by 13 inches wide, and is filled with a wide variety of important information regarding an important period of Egyptian history. The Second Intermediate Period The Rhind papyrus, attributed to a scribe named Ahmes, is written in a Hieratic script, which is essentially a form of "cursive" hieroglyphics - a more affluent style of writing during this period, which is thought to have been around 1600 B.C. (though the math involved is thought to have originated earlier, perhaps as early as 2000 B.C.). The Second Intermediate Period was a crucial era in Egyptian history, and followed a long stretch of piece and prosperity within the land (during which time, the mathematics written of in the Rhind Papyrus are thought to have truly begun to flourish). What is in the Rhind Papyrus? The subjects covered within the papyrus are quite varied and remarkable for this period in history. Most prominently, Ahmes laid out a table of fractions in the form of 2/n, where n is every number between 5 and 101. This was vitally important, as Egyptian mathematics made heavy use of fraction, which formed the basis of their most basic arithmetic. Also included are eighty-four fractional problems; these are algebraic problems which make use of unknown variables, solved using fractions (which can be taken from the aforementioned table), along with certain problems focused around division-by-ten (an ancient precursor to modern decimalization), along with other basic arithmetic. What Does the Rhind Papyrus Show about History? Studies have shown that, while rather elementary on the surface (at least, when viewed in terms of modern mathematics, which teach these "advance" concepts to children early on), the methods of working through each problem on the papyrus demonstrates a foundational knowledge of several much more advanced concepts, such as prime number theory, harmonic progressions (such as those which today might use the sigma notation to solve), composite numbers, and many others. The methods used by Ahmes were all very practical and demonstrate the fact that math has traditionally been used for practical purposes, a far cry from the idea of "pure" mathematics which exist simply for the sake of better understanding numbers (a concept which was essential in early Pythagorean mathematics, and continues on University campuses around the globe today). References: . The Encyclopedia of Science.
The copyright of the article The Rhind Papyrus in Math/Chaos Theory is owned by Isaac M. McPhee. Permission to republish The Rhind Papyrus in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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