Regina Lunkes
HP of Math
9/13/05    

    The Moscow and Rhind papyri are the most useful and insightful documents we have to examine ancient Egyptian mathematics.  We have discovered through these papyri the just how advanced the Egyptian numerical and mathematical system was for their time period.

The Moscow Papyrus

    The Moscow papyrus was written in approximately 1850 B.C.  It covers 25 basic and practical math problems, such as area, volume, and arithmetic.  The original author is unknown.  In 1947, Russian V.S. Golenishchev, purchased the papyrus and sold it to the Moscow Museum of Fine Art.  It remained in Moscow, and became known as the Moscow papyrus.  It is 15 feet long and about three inches wide.
    One of the most interesting problems is problem 14, which seeks to discover the volume of a frustrum, a pyramid with a little of the top cut off.  This is what it looks like on the tablet in hieroglyphics.

 
Sources:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/~ma2jc/egyptian.html
http://www.math.tamu.edu/~don.allen/history/egypt/node4.html


The Rhind Papyrus

    The Rhind Papyrus is named after the man who purchased it in 1858, Alexander Henry Rhind.  It was found during illegal excavations near Ramesseum.  It was placed in the British Museum in 1864 by Henry Rhind’s estate.  Small fragments can also be found in the Brooklyn Museum in New York.  This papyrus dates back to 1650 B.C. and is also referred to as the Ahmes Papyrus, after its author.  Supposedly, Ahmes was not the original writer, but rather he was copying previous scrolls dating as far back as 2650 B.C.  The scroll is over 5 meters long and 33 cm wide.  Slightly different than the Moscow Papyrus, the Rhind focuses on less practical themes, such as approximations of pi, prime and composite numbers, and first order linear equations.  Here is an example of what the Rhind Papyrus looked like.

 

Sources:
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Ahmes.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhind_papyrus