This website accompanies my book:
- E. Robson, Mathematics in Ancient Iraq: A Social
History, Princeton University Press, 2008 [preview on Google Books]
and can also be read in conjunction with my chapter,
"Mesopotamian mathematics", in:
- V.J. Katz (ed.), The
Mathematics of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, and Islam: A
Sourcebook, Princeton University Press, 2007,
pp. 58–186. [preview on Google Books]
[http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8834.html] |
[http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8583.html] |
[http://www.maa.org/EbusPPRO/Bookstore/ProductDetail/tabid/170/Default.aspx?ProductId=1391] |
[http://www.springer.com/mathematics/history+of+mathematics/book/978-0-7923-6481-8] |
[http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415353465/] |
For more information about mathematics in cuneiform, see the following essays:
- 'Mesopotamian mathematics: some historical background [/downloads/robson-katz-2000.pdf]', from V.J. Katz (ed.), Using History to Teach Mathematics, Washington DC: Mathematical Association of America 2000, 149-158. [188 KB pdf file]
- 'The uses of mathematics in ancient Iraq, 6000-600 BC [/downloads/robson-selin-2000.pdf]', from H. Selin (ed.), Mathematics Across Cultures: the History of Non-Western Mathematics, Dordrecht: Kluwer 2000, 93-113. [388 KB pdf file]
- 'Mathematics, metrology, and professional numeracy [/downloads/robson-leick-2007.pdf]', from G. Leick (ed.), The Babylonian World, London: Routledge, 2007. [632 KB pdf file]
There are many further resources on Duncan Melville's
website on Mesopotamian Mathematics [http://it.stlawu.edu/~dmelvill/mesomath/index.html].
For tablets that use numerical data in adminstrative and legal contexts, see the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative [http://cdli.ucla.edu].
The compositions published by the Digital Corpus of Cuneiform Lexical Lists [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/dcclt/] and the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature [http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk] come from the same intellectual environments as cuneiform mathematics. They were often written by the same scribes, and many show a strong interest in number, shape, and other mathematical concepts.
10 Jun 2022
Eleanor Robson, 'Bibliography', The Digital Corpus of Cuneiform Mathematical Texts, Eleanor Robson, 2022 [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/dccmt/Bibliography/]