The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus: British Museum 10057 and 10058

Abstract

II AMONG the mathematical processes known to the Egyptians (for some few of which we have to go to the Berlin and Moscow papyri) were squaring and extraction of square roots, arithmetical progressions and simple geometrical progressions starting from unity, the solution of equations of the first degree, and a few simple cases of equations of the second degree. In geometry, or rather mensuration, they thoroughly understood the areas of square and rectangle; they knew pretty well how to deal with triangles, though precisely how much they knew is a more debatable matter; in a problem dealing with the truncated (isosceles) triangle, we recognise Hero's rpoarf^wv io-oo-KsA.es. They found the area of the circle by squaring f of its diameter, a near approximation -giving TT = 3-160. . . . They knew the volume of the cube and rectangular parallelepipedon; they found the volume of a cylinder by multiplying its height into the area of its base; and one remarkable problem in the Moscow papyrus gives a correct solution for the frustum of a regular square pyramid. Their elaborate system of weights and measures Griffiths especially, and other writers, have sufficiently explained. The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus: British Museum 10057 and 10058. Introduction, Transcription, Translation, and Commentary by Prof. T. Eric Peet. Pp. iv + 136 + 24 plates. (Liverpool: University Press of Liverpool, Ltd.; London: Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd., 1923.) 63s. net.