Babylonian

Mathematics
PRESENTED BY: NIA MOSS AND COLE STAMPS

Who were
the
Babylonians?
Babylonia was a city
located in the central part of
Mesopotamia between the
Tigris and Euphrates rivers
.The Babylonians were active
around the same time the
Egyptians were. They lived in a
large desert but were very
advanced. They had a postal
system, a legal system and
irrigation systems. The
Egyptians, however, had an
environmental advantage to
their way of living.

Trading with
neighbors?
With not a lot of metal or
wood in their environment, the
Babylonians were involved
with a lot of foreign trade. They
did this by traveling by
caravan(Donkeys or Camels) or
ship. Merchants would go long
distances for what they
needed.

Measuring
tools?
Imports:

Lebanon- wood

Asia- Precious metals

India-Silks and Spices

The merchants created scales and

weights for a more precise way of
measuring the rare and expensive
goods from the three countries. It
replaced the previous method that
involved measuring things by donkey
load. The coins to the right are called
Shekels. Shekels weighed a little
less than one third of an ounce and
were used to weigh more precious
things like spices. Heavier items were
measured in heavier weights called
Talents. Talents were about 35
pounds piece. The trading the
Babylonians did led to the
development of money for the first
time.

How did the

Sumerians
Before there were
influence
Babylonians, there were
Sumerians. The
Babylonians?
Babylonians invaded their

area ,Mesopotamia, around

2000 BC creating their
capital at Babylon in 1900
BC. The Sumerians created
a form of writing on wet
clay tablets (like the one on
the right) .They were baked
using the sun leaving lots
of them behind only to be
discovered years later. The
Sumerians had successfully
come up with a way to
record their findings. The
Babylonians say this as
well and decided use their
Idea with their own
findings.

tablets. In the
Babylonian
beginning, they
didnt put
Tablets?
mathematics onto
their tablets. They
recorded topics such
as irrigation
techniques in
Mesopotamia. When
they started putting
numbers on them it
was incredible! They
had a number
system that was
even in some ways
considered more
advanced than
todays. It had a
base of 60 instead

It was an important task for

the rulers of Mesopotamia to
dig canals and to maintain
them, because canals were not
only necessary for irrigation but
also useful for the transport of
goods and armies. The rulers or
high government officials must
have ordered Babylonian
mathematicians to calculate
the number of workers and
days necessary for the building
of a canal, and to calculate the
total expenses of wages of the
workers.
There are several Old
Babylonian mathematical texts
in which various quantities
concerning the digging of a
canal are asked for. They are
YBC 4666, 7164, and VAT 7528,
all of which are written in
Sumerian ..., and YBC 9874 and
BM 85196, No. 15, which are
written in Akkadian ... . From
the mathematical point of view
these problems are

learn and use

from
Babylonians?
Babylonians divided 1 day into 24
hours, one hour into 60 minutes and
one minute into 60 seconds. This
system has lasted for 4,000 years. In
addition to telling time, they started
calculation. They made
multiplication easier by creating the
formula:
ab=[(a+b)2-a2-b2]/2
The formula...
ab=[(a+b)2-(a-b)2]/4
showed all thats needed to multiply
numbers is a table of squares. They
found this by finding the difference
of the two squares looked up and
dividing it by four.
Babylonians didnt have an
algorithm for long division. They
used
a/b=a(1/b)
to divide. To the right is a translation