MCT 038, Plimpton 322

Translation — curated editorial

Editorial

Experimental

Editorial entry — translation cited from: CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P254790.

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Babylonian (ca. 1900-1600 BC)) — MCT 038, Plimpton 322. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).

Attribution

Image: Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA (P254790) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from CDLI raw catalogue, no published translation. P-number P254790..

Related tablets

Related sources

~1800 BCE

Plimpton 322

Whatever its purpose, this single tablet shows that Babylonian mathematicians, working in base-60, had an arithmetic understanding of right triangles a millennium before Pythagoras was born.