Mathematics, administrative and economic activities in Ancient Mesopotamia: the case of the Diyala region in the Old Babylonian Period (c. 2000-1600 BCE)

Abstract

This project seeks to characterize the mathematical culture of computation and quantification present in administrative, economic, and legal documents from the Diyala region, in the Old Babylonian period, more precisely from 1900 to 1700 BCE. Furthermore, the project aims at relating the knowledge and the practices so characterized to what can be derived from more strictly mathematical sources, coming above all from the school environment and studied in a previous project, aiming at identifying possible instances of knowledge transfer in both directions between the environment of the administrative, economic, and legal practices and the environment of more scholarly practices. (AU)