Babylonian Cuneiform (6 results)

London, The Trustees of the British Museum, 1966. Or.hcloth. 20 pp. and 50 plates. Folio. In good condition.

London, The Trustees of the British Museum, 1966. Or.hcloth. 2 pp. and 50 plates. Folio. In good condition.

London,The Trustees of the British Museum, 1966. Or.hcloth. 8 pp. and 50 plates. Folio. In good condition.

Clay tablet (58 x 89 mm). 3 sides with 29 lines in Babylonian Cuneiform. A document concerning arable land belonging to a temple or a palace, describing its division into plots assigned to named individuals. It is dated to the Third Day of the Third Month, equivalent to May or June. The year is unidentified, but probably sometime in the Isin-Larsa period (c. 2000-1700 BCE), which spanned the end of Sumerian power with Third Dynasty of Ur and the birth of the First Babylonian Empire under the dynasty of Hammurabi (c. 1810-1750 BCE). - The text is written on the obverse, reverse, and upper edge. It lists two groups of people, one of six and one of eight men, among whom the land was divided, subject to the administration of the officials Lu-Ninhursag, Sîn-magir, Sîn-iddinam and Sallilum. - The Sumerian city-states of early Mesopotamia were conquered by Sargon the Great in the 24th and 23rd centuries BCE, leading to the creation of the Akkadian Empire. Following its fall in the 22nd century, Sumerian power was revived under the Third Dynasty of Ur before that too gave way to Babylonian conquests by Hammurabi and others. - Cuneiform writing developed in Sumer, nowadays southern Iraq, around the year 2900 BCE out of earlier pictograms. Over time, the pictograms had become more abstracted and wedge-like and took on the value of a syllable which could be used to form words, creating the first proper writing system in human history. - Beyond its initial use in Sumerian, Cuneiform came to be used to write several other languages, such as Akkadian, Elamite and Hittite. It was used to record the Epic of Gilgamesh as well as myths such as that of the Flood, but most documents are administrative records, as this tablet is. - This artefact is documented as in private collections since at least the 1980s, when it was examined by Prof. W. G. Lambert, Professor of Assyriology at the University of Birmingham and Fellow of the British Academy, a copy of whose report on the object is included. - A document of Mesopotamian society at a time of crucial transition between Neo-Sumerian power and the rise of Babylon. - Small patches of surface wear but overall good condition. - 1) French private collection. 2) Swiss private collection. 3) Gallerie L'Étoile d'Ishtar, Paris, 1980s.

Clay tablet (45 x 76 mm). 2 sides in Old Bablonian Cuneiform. Pierced through to allow binding to other tablets. A cuneiform tablet containing mathematical tables, probably from a school where documents such as this would have been used as teaching aids to be studied and copied out by the students. It was clearly kept together with other such tablets, as it is pierced through with a hole from side to side to allow it to be bound together with similar ones. In good condition, with the characters clearly and deeply formed, this piece is a testimony to the educational system of the Old Babylonian period, when the study of mathematics reached its high point in Mesopotamian society. - Education was highly valued in the ancient civilisations that flourished between the Tigris and Euphrates, and we have ample evidence of flourishing scribal schools that taught young people how to write in cuneiform. Mathematics were a crucial part of the curriculum, and learning tables and solving problems were part of pupils' lives then much as they are in the modern era. - The Old Babylonian period in particular saw a boom in the study of mathematics, possibly due to an increased emphasis on justice, so as to allow greater exactitude in making fair decisions about divisions of property, etc. Mesopotamian mathematicians made highly advanced discoveries, which were forgotten after the decline of their culture, with later Greek scholars having to labour intensively to work out problems which had already been solved thousands of years before. - The Mesopotamian counting system was sexagesimal, or based on 60, a number which was convenient due to being easily divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 10. As they wrote numbers and formulated the operations differently than we would today, the Mesopotamian way of doing maths can look quite strange, but they still used the same basic functions that we do today: multiplication, division, square roots, etc. - A handsome testimony to the advanced educational system in Mesopotamian society from a period in which the study of mathematics reached their peak. - Some minor discolorations and a small patch of surface damage. Hole through the centre from side to side, minimal loss to text. Otherwise good condition, characters very clearly formed. - London private collection, examined in the 1980s by Prof. Wilfred George Lambert, Fellow of the British Academy and Professor of Assyriology at the University of Birmingham. A copy of his note is included. - CDLI: P519303. Cf. A. Podany, Weavers, Scribes and Kings (2022), esp. 310ff.

Clay tablet (48 x 84 mm). 2 sides in Old Babylonian cuneiform. A cuneiform tablet containing mathematical tables, probably from a school where documents such as this would have been used as teaching aids to be studied and copied out by the students. Here the head number of 320 is multplied by the integers from 1 to 20, and then 30, 40 and 50. It was clearly kept together with other such tablets, as it is pierced through with a hole from side to side to allow it to be bound together with similar ones. In good condition, with the characters clearly and deeply formed, this piece is a testimony to the educational system of the Old Babylonian period, when the study of mathematics reached its high point in Mesopotamian society. - Education was highly valued in the ancient civilisations that flourished between the Tigris and Euphrates, and we have ample evidence of flourishing scribal schools that taught young people how to write in cuneiform. Mathematics were a crucial part of the curriculum, and learning tables and solving problems were part of pupils' lives then much as they are in the modern era. - The Old Babylonian period in particular saw a boom in the study of mathematics, possibly due to an increased emphasis on justice, so as to allow greater exactitude in making fair decisions about divisions of property, etc. Mesopotamian mathematicians made highly advanced discoveries, which were forgotten after the decline of their culture, with later Greek scholars having to labour intensively to work out problems which had already been solved thousands of years before. - The Mesopotamian counting system was sexagesimal, or based on 60, a number which was convenient due to it being easily divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 10. As they wrote numbers and formulated the operations differently than we would today, the Mesopotamian way of doing maths can look quite strange, but they still used the same basic functions that we do today: multiplication, division, square roots, etc. - A handsome testimony to the advanced educational system in Mesopotamian society from a period in which the study of mathematics reached their peak. - Some minor discolorations and a small patch of surface damage. Hole through the centre from side to side, practically no loss to text. Overall good condition, characters very clearly formed. - London private collection, examined in the 1980s by Prof. Wilfred George Lambert, Fellow of the British Academy and Professor of Assyriology at the University of Birmingham. A copy of his note is included, as is a copy of a note by Dr. Manuel Ceccarelli of the University of Tübingen, who also studied this tablet. - CDLI: P519799. Cf. A Podany, Weavers, Scribes and Kings, esp. 310ff.