Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

Calculation is a form of professional numeracy that, from the first evidence of writing in Egypt to the period of the New Kingdom, comprised concepts and methods different from those of contemporary Mesopotamia. In approximately the late fourth millennium BCE, professional numeracy developed in both regions. A comparison of these two early mathematical cultures allows insights into the parallel necessities that prompted this development, as well as elucidation of the differences in the formation of the two mathematical systems, their historiographical treatment, and the consequences of the choices of writing material for the preservation of sources.