2 SCIENCE IN GRECO-ROMAN ANTIQUITY 



be decorated and the image-model which is depicted on 

 it, are in fact divided by parallel lines into the same 

 number of squares and in each square of the wall are 

 reproduced the forms and colours in the corresponding 

 square of the image-model. 1 Finally the shape, aspect 

 and construction of monuments such as the pyramids 

 bear witness to a fairly precise practical knowledge of 

 geometry, mechanics and astronomy. As to the infor- 

 mation furnished by hieroglyphics and cuneiforms, it 

 amounts to little. The only document of any impor- 

 tance is a manual of calculation, whose author is the 

 scribe Ahmes, and which was probably written between 

 the years 1700 and 1750 B.C. 2 



Thus, seeing the paucity of information available, we 

 are reduced for the most part to conjectures concerning 

 the scientific knowledge of the Egyptians and Chaldeans. 

 What is certain at all events is that their knowledge was 

 always dominated by needs of a practical or religious 

 order. 



1. THE MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES 



Theoretical arithmetic was little developed amongst 

 the Egyptians, as amongst the Chaldeans. 



In practice and for reckoning they made use of 

 abacuses the arrangement of which calls to mind the 

 ball-frame formerly used in infants' schools. 3 As a 



1 29 Zeuthen, Histoire des mathematiques, p. 5. 



2 This document (Rhind papyrus of the British Museum) 

 has been translated into German and studied by A. Eisenlohr : 

 Ein mathematisches Handbuch der Alten Aegypter, 2 vols., 

 Leipzig, 1877. Cf. 22 Milhaud, Nouvelles Etudes, p. 58. 

 A recent and more profound study of this document has been 

 made by T. Eric Peet : The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, 

 The University Press of Liverpool, Hodder & Stoughton, 

 London. (See Isis, vi, p. 553-7.) There exists in Moscow, 

 if it has not been destroyed in these latter years, another 

 important geometrical papyrus which has not yet been studied, 

 and of which no one possesses a copy. 



3 23 Rouse Ball, History of Mathematics, 1, pp. 3 and 132. 



