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arXiv · 1306.5989

The Powers of 9 and Related Mathematical Tables from Babylon

Mathieu Ossendrijver
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Abstract

Late-Babylonian mathematics (450-100 BC), represented by some 60 cuneiform tablets from Babylon and Uruk, is incompletely known compared to its abundantly preserved, well-studied Old-Babylonian predecessor (1800-1600 BC). With the present paper, 16 fragments from Babylon, probably belonging to 13 different tablets, are added to this corpus. Two remarkable tablets represent a hitherto unknown class of very large factorization tables that can be adequately described as Babylonian examples of number crunching (Section I). In these tables a very large sexagesimal number representing a small factor (9 or 12) raised to a high power, or a product of such numbers, is repeatedly divided by its constituent factors (9 or 12), very likely until 1 is reached. In Text A the initial number is a 25-digit number equivalent to 9 to the power 46; in Text B it is a 30-digit number equivalent to 9 to the power 11 times 12 to the power 39 - the longest number attested in ancient Mesopotamia and, probably, in all antiquity. Most other fragments belong to tables with reciprocals (Section II) and squares (Section III). Finally, two fragments contain multiplications of one kind or another (Section IV).

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Mathieu Ossendrijver. 2013-06-25. The Powers of 9 and Related Mathematical Tables from Babylon. https://doi.org/10.5615/jcunestud.66.2014.0149

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