New Mathematical Cuneiform Texts

This monograph presents in great detail a large number of both unpublished and previously published Babylonian mathematical texts in the cuneiform script.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 The previously unpublished mathematical cuneiform texts presented in this book were discovered by Farouk Al-Rawi, who also made numerous beautiful hand copies of most of the clay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.

Jöran Friberg is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden. In addition to A Remarkable Collection of Babylonian Mathematical Texts (Springer, 2007), he has written the book Unexpected Links Between Egyptian and Babylonian Mathematics (World Scientific, 2005) and its sequel Amazing Traces of a Babylonian Origin in Greek Mathematics (World Scientific, 2007).

Farouk Al-Rawi, former head of the Department of Archaeology at Baghdad University, is presently associated with the School of Oriental and African studies, University of London, UK, as Professor of Ancient Languages and Archaeology. He is the (co-)author of numerous works and is particularly known for the presentation of the important Old Babylonian mathematical cuneiform text Haddad 104, which he has written together with M. Roaf and which appeared in Sumer 43 (1984).