Triangle geometrical tablet Ashmolean 1931 91

Translation — curated editorial

Editorial

Experimental

Editorial entry — translation cited from: Wikimedia Commons file: File:Triangle geometrical tablet Ashmolean 1931 91.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ATriangle_geometrical_tablet_Ashmolean_1931_91.jpg. Description: Clay tablet with geometrical diagram of a triangle. Calculation of the area of the triangle, but the scribe got it wrong, cf. Robson, "Mathematical cuneiform tablets in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford", SCIAMVS 05 pp 40-41. Tablet from Kish. A

Scholarly note

Tablet image sourced from Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). No scholarly translation referenced in source metadata. Source description: Clay tablet with geometrical diagram of a triangle. Calculation of the area of the triangle, but the scribe got it wrong, cf. Robson, "Mathematical cuneiform tablets in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford",

Attribution

Image: Zunkir — Wikimedia Commons. source
Translation excerpted from Wikimedia Commons file: File:Triangle geometrical tablet Ashmolean 1931 91.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ATriangle_geometrical_tablet_Ashmolean_1931_91.jpg. Description: Clay tablet with geometrical diagram of a triangle. Calculation of the area of the triangle, but the scribe got it wrong, cf. Robson, "Mathematical cuneiform tablets in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford", SCIAMVS 05 pp 40-41. Tablet from Kish. A.

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.