Transcript Overview of Mesopotamian History

Historical Orientation –
Mesopotamia


Once again: “The past is a foreign country;
they do things differently there” L.P. Hartley,
The Go-Between
Today, we'll again do a bit of orientation (in
location and time) for the second of the ancient
civilizations whose mathematics was
especially important for the development of the
subject.
Ancient Mesopotamia


the “land between the rivers”
Tigris and Euphrates – mostly contained in
current countries of Iraq, Iran, Syria.
Another very long history





~5500 BCE -- First village settlements in the
South
~3500 - 2800 BCE -- Sumerian city-state
period, first pictographic texts
~3300 - 3100 BCE -- first cuneiform writing
created with a reed stylus on a wet clay tablet,
then sometimes baked in an oven to set
combined with a pretty dry climate, these
records are very durable!
A tablet with cuneiform writing
Note the limited collection of forms you can make
with a wedge-shaped stylus:
Cuneiform writing



Different combinations of up-down and
sideways wedges were used to represent
syllables
Was used to represent many different spoken
languages over a long period – 1000 years +
We'll see the way numbers were represented
in this system shortly
Concentrate on southern area




~2800 - 2320 BCE -- Early Dynastic Period,
Old Sumerian literature
~2320 - 2180 BCE -- Akkadian (Sumerian)
empire, first real centralized government
~2000 BCE -- collapse of remnant of Sumerian
empire
~2000 - 1600 BCE -- Ammorite kingdom "Old
Babylonian Period" (roughly contemporaneous
with Egyptian Middle Kingdom)
Cultural landmarks




Hammurabi Code
Mathematics texts that we will study in detail
starting next time
Editing of Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh
Educational system focused on scribal
schools training youths for careers in religious
and government institutions, as well as recordkeeping for private citizens. Mathematically
trained scribes were professionals.
Later history



This part of the world has been fought over
and conquered repeatedly – most recently, of
course, in the two Iraq wars of the 1990's and
2000's CE – a very complicated story!
Also figures in Biblical history (“Babylonian
captivity” of Jewish people)
612 - 539 BCE -- “New Babylonian” period
(Nebuchadnezzar) height of Babylonian
astronomy – interaction with Greek
mathematics and science in period
immediately following
Decipherment of cuneiform



As was the case with Egyptian hieroglyphics,
cuneiform inscriptions could not be read until
scholarly work in the 19th century – work of
Henry Rawlinson, Edward Hincks, others
The “Rosetta Stone'” – a series of parallel
texts in different languages, found in presentday Iran – created by Darius I, the same
Persian king who invaded Greece, was
defeated at the battle of Marathon, 490 BCE
Old Persian, Elamite, Babylonian forms were
deciphered in that order
The Behistun inscriptions
Babylonian numerals
A base b = 60 positional system



These symbols served as the “digits” for a
positional base 60 number system
For example, to write a number like 142, the
Babylonians would break it up as 142 = 2 x 60
+ 22, and write the “digit” for 2, followed by the
“digit” for 22
There is a potential ambiguity here – do you
see why?
Features of Babylonian
mathematics



Number system looks clumsy to us, but they
used it very effectively for calculation with large
numbers
One reason this was possible – they made
quite extensive use of tables of information as
memory/calculation aids (will see an example
next time)
They went (much) farther than the Egyptians
did into algebra and “geometric algebra”
And after that, …




Baghdad under Muslim caliphate was a world
center of learning during “dark ages” in Europe
House of Wisdom – something like a
university or research institute
Scholars there collected, studied, and
extended the works from the classical Greek
and Roman eras
Were transmitted back to Europe during the
Renaissance – will discuss this later(!)