/sci/ - Science & Math

The Rhind Papyrus is an ancient Egyptian mathematical papyrus which dates from about 1650 BC. This is around the time of ancient Egypt's middle kingdom (a bit later, it seems). The papyrus contains some (very) elementary problems of arithmetic and geometry - in particular, quantities are reckoned (somewhat arbitrarily!) in terms of /Egyptian fractions/, which are sums of unit fractions (fractions whose numerator is one):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_fraction

In the mid-19th century one Alexander Rhind, a Scottish antiquarian, purchased the papyrus in a shady deal; this is where the texts' namesake comes from. Mr. Rhind died a few years later, and so the papyrus came to be in the possession of the British Museum, where it lives today.

I went to the library and I have an English edition (Chace) of the papyrus close at hand, so I'm going to go over it and post about it in this thread. It will be a very, very simple mathematical recreation, which yet has some historical interest, and then I can say I've been through a meme text. If you find this thread boring, you're welcome to hide it, but as we'll see, it has a perfect right to be on this board.

Comparison with my library book shows that this OP picture is problems 45-60, or thereabouts.