Full Description
This book focuses on the ancient Near East, early imperial China, South-East Asia, and medieval Europe, shedding light on mathematical knowledge and practices documented by sources relating to the administrative and economic activities of officials, merchants and other actors. It compares these to mathematical texts produced in related school contexts or reflecting the pursuit of mathematics for its own sake to reveal the diversity of mathematical practices in each of these geographical areas of the ancient world. Based on case studies from various periods and political, economic and social contexts, it explores how, in each part of the world discussed, it is possible to identify and describe the different cultures of quantification and computation as well as their points of contact. The thirteen chapters draw on a wide variety of texts from ancient Near East, China, South-East Asia and medieval Europe, which are analyzed by researchers from various fields, including mathematics, history, philology, archaeology and economics. The book will appeal to historians of science, economists and institutional historians of the ancient and medieval world, and also to Assyriologists, Indologists, Sinologists and experts on medieval Europe.
Contents
Chapter 1. Mathematics, Administrative and Economic Activities in the Ancient Worlds: An introduction (Cécile Michel and Karine Chemla).- Chapter 2. A Comparative Study of Prices and Wages in Royal Inscriptions, Administrative Texts and Mathematical Texts in the Old Babylonian Kingdom of Larsa (Cécile Michel, with contributions by Robert Middeke-Conlin and Christine Proust).- Chapter 3. Computation in the Arthaśāstra (Mark McClish).- Chapter 4. Official Salaries and State Taxes as Seen in Qin-Han Manuscripts, with a Focus on Mathematical Texts (Peng Hao).- Chapter 5. Insights into the Administration of Ancient Irrigation Systems in Third Millennium BCE Mesopotamia (Stephanie Rost).- Chapter 6. Mathematical Computations in the Management of Public Construction Work in Mesopotamia (End of the Third and Beginning of the Second Millennium BCE) (Martin Sauvage).- Chapter 7. The use of volume in the measurement of grain in early imperial China (Karine Chemla and Ma Biao).- Chapter 8. TheMeasurement of Fields During the Pre-Sargonic Period (Camille Lecompte).- Chapter 9. Early-Dynastic Tables from Southern Mesopotamia, or the Multiple Facets of the Quantification of Surfaces (Christine Proust).- Chapter 10. Computation Practices of the Assyrian Merchants during the Nineteenth Century BCE (Cécile Michel).- Chapter 11. Connecting a Disconnect. Can Evidence for a Scribal Education be Found in a Professional Setting During the Old Babylonian Period? (Robert Middeke-Conlin).- Chapter 12. Loans and Interest in Sanskrit Legal and Mathematical Texts (Sreeramula Rajeswara Sarma and Takanori Kusuba).- Chapter 13. Computational Practices Around Coins and Coinage: John of Murs' Quadripartitum Numerorum and French Money Changers' Books (Marc Bompaire and Matthieu Husson).
