Of the approximately half million clay tablets excavated at the beginning of the 19th century, about 400 are of a mathematical nature. Probably the most famous is called Plimpton 322, referring to the fact that it is tablet number 322 in the G.A. Plimpton Collection at Columbia University. The tablet has a table of four columns and 15 rows of numbers in the cuneiform script of the period. It is believed to have been written about 1800 BC in Babylonia. The table appears to be a listing of Pythagorean triples, whole numbers that are a solution to the Pythagorean theorem, $a^2\; +\; b^2\; =\; c^2$, such as (3,4,5).

References

• Joyce, David E., 1995. "Plimpton 322", Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Clark University.
• Robson, Eleanor, "Words and pictures: New light on Plimpton 322", American Mathematical Monthly, Feb 2002.

External links

• Description and picture of the tablet
• "The Babylonian tablet Plimpton 322"

See also

• Babylonian mathematics
• History of mathematics

Babylonian mathematics

פלימפטון 322