Abstract
Every culture has mathematics, but some have more than others. The cuneiform cultures of the pre-Islamic Middle East left a particularly rich mathematical heritage, some of which profoundly influenced late Classical and medieval Arabic traditions, but which was for the most part lost in antiquity and has begun to be recovered only in the last century or so.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Bibliography and Further Reading
Bahrani, Zainab. ‘Conjuring Mesopotamia: imaginative geography and a world past.’ In Archaeology Under Fire: Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, Lynn Meskell, ed. London and New York: Routledge, 1998, pp. 159–174.
Black, Jeremy, Graham Cunningham, Eleanor Robson and Gábor Zólyomi, eds. The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk Oxford: University of Oxford, 1998–
Caubet, Annie and Pouyssegur, Patrick. The Ancient Near East. Paris: Editions Pierre Terrail, 1998.
Collon, Dominique. First Impressions: Cylinder Seals in the Ancient Near East. London: British Museum Press, 1987.
Collon, Dominique. Ancient Near Eastern Art. London: British Museum Press, 1995.
Cooke, Roger. The History of Mathematics: a Brief Course. New York: Wiley, 1997.
Curtis, J. E. and J. E. Reade, eds. Art and Empire: Treasures from Assyria in the British Museum. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995.
Englund, Robert K. ‘Administrative timekeeping in ancient Mesopotamia.’ Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 31: 121–185, 1988.
Englund, Robert K. ‘Hard work — where will it get you? Labor management in Ur III Mesopotamia.’ Journal of Near Eastern Studies 50: 255–280, 1991.
Englund, Robert K. ‘Texts from the Late Uruk period.’ In Mesopotamien: Späturuk-Zeit und Frühdynastische Zeit, Pascal Attinger and Markus Wäfler, eds. Göttingen: andenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1998, pp. 15–233.
Fowler, David and Eleanor Robson. ‘Square root approximations in Old Babylonian mathematics: YBC 7289 in context.’ Historia Mathematica 25: 366–378, 1998.
Friberg, Jöran. ‘Mathematik.’ In RealLexikon der Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie 7, Dietz O. Edzard, ed. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1987-90, pp. 531–585.
Friberg, Jöran. ‘On the structure of cuneiform metrological table texts from the —1st millennium.’ In Die Rolle der Astronomie in Kulturen Mesopotamiens, Hans. D. Galter, ed. Graz: RM Druck-und Verlagsgesellschaft, 1993, pp. 383–405.
Geller, M. ‘The last wedge.’ Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 87: 43–96, 1997.
Gibson, McG. ‘Iraq since the Gulf War: the loss of archaeological context and the illegal trade in Mesopotamian antiquities.’ Culture Without Context 1: 6–8, 1997.
Gibson, McG. and R. D. Biggs, eds. The Organization of Power: Aspects of Bureaucracy in the Ancient Near East. 2nd ed. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1991.
Goff, Beatrice Laura. Symbols of Prehistoric Mesopotamia. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1963.
Høyrup, Jens. ‘Algebra and naive geometry. An investigation of some basic aspects of Old Babylonian mathematical thought.’ Altorientalische Forschungen 17: 27-69; 262–354, 1990.
Høyrup, Jens. ‘Sub-scientific mathematics: observations on a pre-modern phenomenon.’ History of Science 28: 63–86, 1990.
Høyrup, Jens. In Measure, Number and Weight. Studies in Mathematics and Culture. New York: State University of New York Press, 1994.
Høyrup, Jens. ‘Babylonian mathematics.’ In Companion Encyclopedia of the History and Philosophy of the Mathematical Sciences 1, Ivor Grattan-Guinness, ed. London: Routledge, 1994, pp. 21–29.
Høyrup, Jens. ‘Changing trends in the historiography of Mesopotamian mathematics: an insider’s view.’ History of Science 34:1–32, 1996.
Jones, Alexander. ‘The evidence for Babylonian arithmetical schemes in Greek astronomy.’ In Die Rolle der Astronomie in den Kulturen Mesopotamiens, Hans. D. Galter, ed. Graz: RM Druck-und Verlagsgesellschaft, 1993, pp. 77–94.
Kilmer, Anne D. ‘Sumerian and Akkadian names for designs and geometric shapes.’ In Investigating Artistic Environments in the Ancient Near East, Ann C. Gunter, ed. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1990, pp. 83–91.
Koch-Westenholz, Ulla. Mesopotamian Astrology. An Introduction to Babylonian and Assyrian Celestial Divination. Copenhagen: Carsten Niebuhr Institute, 1995.
Leichty, E. and von Soden, W. The Omen Series Shumma Izbu. Locust Valley, New York: J. J. Augustin, 1970.
Leslie, Charles. ‘Style tradition and change: an analysis of the earliest painted pottery from northern Iraq.’ Journal of Near Eastern Studies 11: 57–66, 1952.
Liverani, M. ‘The shape of Neo-Sumerian fields.’ Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture 5: 147–186, 1990.
Maekawa, K. ‘Cultivation methods in the Ur III period.’ Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture 5: 115–145,1990.
Neugebauer, Otto. The Exact Sciences in Antiquity. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1952. Reprinted New York: Dover, 1969.
Neugebauer, Otto and Abraham J. Sachs. Mathematical Cuneiform Texts. New Haven: American Oriental Society and the American Schools of Oriental Research, 1945.
Nissen, Hans, Peter Damerow and Robert K. Englund. Archaic Bookkeeping: Early Writing and Techniques of Administration in the Ancient Near East. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
Pingree, David. ‘Hellenophilia versus the history of science.’ Isis 83: 554–563, 1992.
Postgate, J. N. Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History. London and New York: Routledge, 1992.
Powell, Marvin A. ‘The antecedents of Old Babylonian place notation and the early history of Babylonian mathematics.’ Historia Mathematica 3: 417–439, 1976.
Powell, Marvin A. ‘Maße und Gewichte.’ In RealLexikon der Assyriologie und vorderasiatischen Archäologie 7, Dietz O. Edzard, ed. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1987–90, pp. 457–530.
Reade, Julian. Mesopotamia. London: British Museum Press, 1991.
Roaf, Michael. Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East. Oxford: Facts on File, 1990.
Robson, Eleanor. ‘Bibliography of Mesopotamian maths.’ http://it.stlawu.edu/~dmelvill/mesomath/erbiblio.html/~dmelvill/mesomath/erbiblio.html, 1996
Robson, Eleanor. Mesopotamian Mathematics: Technical Constants in Bureaucracy and Education, 2100–1600 BC. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999.
Robson, Eleanor. ‘Mesopotamian mathematics: some historical background.’ In Using History to Teach Mathematics: an International Perspective. V. J. Katz, ed. Washington, DC: athematical Association of America, forthcoming 2000.
Rochberg, Francesca. ‘Astronomy and calendars in ancient Mesopotamia.’ In Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, vol. 3, Jack M. Sasson, ed. New York: Scribner’s, 1995, pp. 1925–1940.
Roth, Martha. Law Collections of Ancient Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995.
Snell, Daniel. Ledgers and Prices: Early Mesopotamian Merchant Accounts. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.
Starr, Ivan. The Rituals of the Diviner. Malibu: Undena Publications, 1983.
Talion, Françoise. ‘Art and the ruler: Gudea of Lagash.’ Asian Art 5: 31–51, 1992.
Tinney, Steve. ‘Texts, tablets, and teaching. Scribal education in Nippur and Ur.’ Expedition 40(2): 40–50, 1998.
Toomer, G. J. ‘Hipparchus and Babylonian astronomy.’ In A Scientific Humanist: Studies in Memory of Abraham Sachs, E. Leichty, M. de J. Ellis and P. Gerardi, eds. Philadelphia: The University Museum, 1988, pp. 353–362.
Van De Mieroop, Marc. Cuneiform Texts and the Writing of History. London and New York: Routledge, 1999.
Veldhuis, Niek. ‘Reading the signs.’ In All Those Nations: Cultural Encounters Within and With the Near East, H. L. J. Vanstiphout, ed. Groningen: Styx Publications, 1999, pp. 161–174.
Walker, C. B. F. Cuneiform. London: British Museum Press, 1987.
Washburn, D. K. and D. W. Crowe. Symmetries of Culture: Theory and Practice of Plane Pattern Analysis. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2000 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Robson, E. (2000). The Uses of Mathematics in Ancient Iraq, 6000–600 BC. In: Selin, H. (eds) Mathematics Across Cultures. Science Across Cultures: The History of Non-Western Science, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4301-1_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4301-1_7
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-0260-1
Online ISBN: 978-94-011-4301-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive