Ancient Egyptian Science: A Source Book, vol. 3: Ancient Egyptian Mathematics.

AuthorSPALINGER, ANTHONY
PositionReview

Ancient Egyptian Science: A Source Book, vol. 3: Ancient Egyptian Mathematics. By MARSHALL CLAGETT, Philadelphia: AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, 1999. Pp. x + 462, illustrations. $30.

This work, the third in a series of detailed but basic studies about ancient Egyptian mathematics, is far less extensive than Clagett's previous contributions to the scientific perception of pharaonic Egypt. Clagett is at his best when he is explaining the practical side of things, but here he too often merely compiles existing ideas. This orientation, which pervades the introduction and the entire first chapter, actually lessens the utility of this "source book."

Clagett begins by writing at length about the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, our major extant compendium, thereby spending an inordinate amount of time rehashing previous non-Egyptological and Egyptological contributions to the series of 2/n calculations. This approach has blinded him to the last two decades of pertinent Egyptological research on the Rhind Papyrus and other mathematical tractates from the Nile Valley.

Besides not engaging the latest scholarship, Clagett also avoids discussion of the day-to-day calculations of the Egyptians. Account papyri and ostraca are overlooked, even though we possess quite a large number of such mundane yet mathematically revealing texts. Surprising results have been forthcoming from such lowly sources, results that include helpful and revealing points of arithmetical applications. A discussion of these texts belong in the type of book for which Clagett aims, but unfortunately the author has not bothered to turn to the mass of Egyptological primary material, such as the ostraca from the workmen's village of Deir el Medineh (Dynasties XIX-XX) or the numerous mathematical calculations (but not treatises) from Illahun (late Dynasty XII).

This reviewer was disappointed to find Clagett ignorant of the complex Calculations involved with dilution of liquids ("Dates in Ancient Egypt," Studien zur altagyptischen Kultur 15 [1988]: 255-76), and those used for the varying measures of grain ("The Grain System of Dynasty 18," Studien zur altdgyprischen Kultur 14 [1984]: 283-311, and "Baking During the Reign of Seti I," Bulletin de l'Institut francais d'Archeologie Orientale 86 [1968]: 307-52), to take two key examples. Even the recent study on the background layout and reuse of the famous Rhind Mathematical Papyrus in "The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus as a Historical Source,"...

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