A Remarkable Collection of Babylonian Mathematical Texts

The sub-collection of mathematical cuneiform texts in the Schøyen Collection makes a substantial addition to the known corpus of such texts. It contains 121 texts, not counting 151 multiplication tables and 53 small weight stones. According to the catalog at the end of the Index of Subjects below, where those 121 mathematical texts are ordered by content, nearly all known kinds, and some new kinds, of mathematical cun- form texts are represented in the collection. Therefore it has been possible to organize the present work as a broad general account of Mesopotamian mathematics, illustrated mainly by texts from the Schøyen Collection, but occasionally also by previously published texts. The general disposition of the book is borrowed from my own concise but comprehensive survey of Mesopotamian mathematics in the article on “Mathematics” in Reallexikon der Assyriologie, vol. 7 (1990). My ambition has been to make the account easily accessible to all kinds of readers, yet still as detailed and exhaustive as possible. For that purpose, there is, for instance, an introductory Chapter 0 on “how to get a b- ter understanding of mathematical cuneiform texts”. The chapter begins with a discussion of the danger of unintentional anachronisms in translations of pre-Greek mathematical texts, and continues with a presentation of the kind of “conform” transliterations, translations, and interpretations, true to the original, that will be used throughout the book in discussions of individual texts.