PAPER

THE HISTORY OF THE MATHEMATICS

"The History of Babylonian Arithmetic"

Lecturer: - Prof. Dr. Usman Mulbar, M.Pd.

- Syahrullah Asyari, S.Pd. M.Pd.

by:

Fahriani Dwi Putri

200101510000

Fayza Ananda
200101511002

STATE UNIVERSITY OF MAKASSAR

FACULTY OF MATHEMATIC AND NATURAL SCIENCES

MATHEMATICS EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

2021-2022
 PREFACE

First of all, let us praise and thank Allah SWT. Thanks to the abundance of His grace
and grace so that the author can complete this paper properly in accordance with the allotted
time.

This paper is intended to fulfill one of the assignments in The History of Mathematics
course which discusses "The History of Babylonian Arithmetic". This paper is materialized
from several relevant sources with the aim of increasing the knowledge of the reader. The
authors would like to thank all those who have provided input, motivation, and helped the
author in compiling this paper.

The author realizes that this paper is still far from being perfect. Therefore, the writer
expects constructive criticism and suggestions from readers. The author hopes that this paper
can be useful for everyone.

Makassar, September 1, 2021

Writers
 CHAPTHER I

PRELIMINARY

A. Background

Babylon was a covenant-speaking ancient country and cultural area in south-central

Mesapotamia (modern-day Iraq and Syria), with Babylon as its capital. Sumuabum, an
Amorite leader, gained Babylonian independence from nearby Kazallu in 1894 BC and
became the first king of Babylon. When King Hammurabi of the Amorites established a tiny
state outside the borders of the Akkadian Empire, the Babylonians rose to prominence.

The Babylonians adopted Akkadian as their official language and Sumerian as their
religious language. Akkadian is the language spoken in ancient Mesopotamia especially by
the Babylonians, Akkadian is known for its cuneiform writing system. Mesopotamia is a
region of southwest asia that is integrated with the Tigris and Yuvraj rivers which also
benefits from the climate and geography of the area where Mesopotamia is the beginning of
human civilization for today.

Babylon is referenced for the first time in an old text from the reign of Sargon of
Akkad, dated 23 BC. Throughout Mesopotamia throughout the third century BC, there were
several symbiotic cultural advances between the Sumerians and Akkadians, including the
widespread use of bilingualism or bilingualism throughout the region. Because of the
interdependence of the two peoples' political centers, the Mesopotamian culture from the
Bronze Age to the early Iron Age is generally referred to as "Assyro-Babylonian."

Even the Mesopotamians developed Babylonian Mathematics. Named Babylonian

Mathematics because of the Babylonian region's primary role as a place for learning. At the
time of the Hellenistic civilization Babylonian mathematics combined Greek and Egyptian
mathematics to give rise to Greek mathematics. Babylonian mathematical texts are numerous
and very well edited. The Babylonian mathematical system was sexagesimal or a number
based on 60. Therefore, in modern times the number 60 is used as 60 seconds in a minute,
and 60 minutes in an hour.

Another milestone in mathematics is the finding of the value of the square root; even
Babylonian scientists demonstrated the Pythagorean theorem long before Pythagoras himself
developed his theory, as demonstrated by Dennis Ramsey, who translated an old record dated
from 1900 BC. It was also known as the Babylonian mile in Babylon, and it was used to
measure a distance of around seven miles today. This distance measurement is translated to
one mile-time, which is used to calculate the length of time represented by the sun's voyage.

B. Formulation of the problem

1. Development of Babylonian Arithmetic based on antiquity

2. The Implementation of Babylonian Arithmetic in the Mathematics Classroom

C. Writing purpose

1. To know the development of Babylonian Arithmetic based on antiquities

2. To know The Implementation of Babylonian Arithmetic in the Mathematics
Classroom
 CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

A. Development of Babylonian Arithmetic based on antiquity

For the computation of the cosmos, the growth of science in Babylon is

recommended. The Babylonians were more sophisticated than the Egyptians in mathematics.
This is due to the fact that, while Babylonian mathematics has strong empirical foundations,
which are visible in the majority of the tablets that have been successfully translated,
Babylonian mathematics has tended to utilize more theoretical terms. The amazing simplicity
of their numerical system is the key to his will.

The Babylonians utilized hieroglyphic characters applied to stone as writing devices,

although they did not bruise letters on stone. Papyrus leaves are not found in Babylon as they
are in Egypt. On clay tablets, all written works or inscriptions are inscribed. They utilize a
type of hardwood blade that looks like an elongated triangle stick to cut numbers or letters.
When this elongated triangle stick is placed against a wet or soft clay surface, a tapering
triangular depression is formed. The following phase must be drying once the point of this
blade is placed against the clay.

The Babylonians were the only pre-Greek society that had implemented a positional
number system. Such a system is based on the notion of place value where the value of a
symbol depends on the position it occupies in the numerical representation. The Babylonian
number scale is not decimal but sexagesimal.

I. Sexagesimal

Sexagesimal is a number system that uses the number 60 as its base. So for each place
a number is moved to the left the value of that number increases by a factor of 60. Base 60
has the advantage that it has multiple easy divisors {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30}, which
allows calculations with fractions. When integers are displayed in the sexagesimal system the
last space or place is reserved for numbers from 1, 2, 3, …., 59. For example, the Babylonian
number 3 25 4 has the meaning: 3 . 602+ 25.60+ 4=12.304 and not: 3. 103+ 25.10+ 4=3254

At first this sexagesimal used people to count on their fingers to 12 using only one
hand, with the thumb pointing at each finger bone on the four fingers in turn. A traditional
counting system still used in many parts of Asia works this way, and can help to explain the
 occurrence of the base 12 and 60 number systems in addition to those based on 10, 20, and 5.
In this system, the (usually right) hand counts repeatedly. times to 12, displays the number of
iterations on the other (usually left), up to the fifties, i.e. 60 is full. Since there was no symbol
for zero in the early Sumerian or Babylonian numbering systems, it is not always clear how
the number should be interpreted, and the actual value must sometimes have been determined
by the context.

II. Nail Writing

The Babylonian numeral form uses numerical notation emphasizing the two
characters. There is an vertical stylus stroke and a tilted stroke or also known as nail writing.
The vertical stylus stroke to symbolize the number 1 for the number 2 uses an vertical stylus
stroke of 2 and up to 9. For the number 10 use a a tilted stroke, and up to 19 use a a tilted
stroke and an vertical stylus stroke. For 20 there is a tilted stroke of 2 and so on.

When the two symbols are used together the symbols representing the tens are placed
to the left of the units symbols. Appropriate spacing between groups of symbols arranged
close together corresponds to a decreasing power of 60, read from left to right.

Cuneiform writing was employed to create Babylonian tablets. The plates' remnants
were discovered in the ruins of a city named Nineveh. In this city, around 1500 slabs dated
between 2000 BC and 300 BC were discovered. This finding is the key to understanding
society, counting, and so on. Figures from the Babylonian period were first discovered on
ancient tablets, thus the royal dynasty that ruled at the time is said to have ranged from King
Hammurabi to King Iskandar Aguang. There were four tablets discovered:

1. The Yale YBC 7289 Tablet, consisting of a board on which a diagram is drawn. The
diagram is a rectangle measuring 30.
 0. The Plimpton 322 Tablet, this tablet is a dirt board with number 322 used as a
collection at the GA Plimpton house at Columbia University. Plimpton is one of the most
discovered works of Babylonian mathematicians. Plimpton 322 was written by the
Babylonians around 1900 to 1600 BC, and was first described by Neugebauer and Sachs
in 1945.

0. The Susa Tablet, researching how to calculate the radius of a circle through an
equilateral triangle. In this susa tablet there is a way to calculate the radius of a circle
through an equilateral triangle. In this susa tablet there is a triangle ABC with the center
of the circle at point O, and there is a line AD connecting point A with line BC. From the
figure, we can see that triangle ABD is a triangle on the right side of a circle.

0. The dhibayi tell Tablet, displays a geometric problem that asks for the dimensions of a
square whose area and diagonal are known.
 The Babylonian place value notation in its earliest development was faced with
conflicting interpretations because there was no symbol for zero there was no way to
distinguish between numbers such as 84 and 3624. 84 when translated into 1. 60+24=84 and
3624 when translated becomes 1. 602+ 0. 60+ 24=3624 has a different form but if written in
cuneiform it will have the same form:

The separator was introduced to act as a place mark. Therefore, showing a blank
space between two numbers in a number with a separator, the number can be clearly
distinguished.

III. Pythagoras
 The Pythagorean theorem is used to find the sides of a right triangle if two sides are
known. This was discovered by an expert named Pythagoras in 540 BC by using this path the
way to find the side of an unknown right angle is to square the two sides of the triangle and
then add them together and that is the result of the hypotenuse. Surprisingly this way of
searching was discovered by the Babylonians in 1700 BC. The picture for the Pythagorean
triangle if on a wall that stands on the ground leaning a slanted wooden slat, the length of the
wood can be known by squaring the two upright sides and adding up the result is the square
of the hypotenuse.

B. The Implementation of Babylonian Arithmetic in the Mathematics Classroom

Ancient civilizations had to gaze up at the sky to measure time for thousands of years.
They had to look at how long it took the earth to complete one circle around the sun to
determine the year. They estimated how long it took the moon to orbit the Earth to determine
the moon's time. Aside from that, the weeks and days are determined from the period of one
revolution of the earth on its axis.

After the Sumerians had developed the number 60 since 2000 BC, then the 60 minute
system was created by Hipparchus and Greek astronomers. the system was developed by the
Babylonians who had previously conquered the Sumerians. The Babylonians made the same
astronomical calculations as the sexagesimal system, using the number 60 as a basis. Until
now, it is still unknown why the number 60 was chosen to be applied in the time system. but
the number 60 is considered the most appropriate in the calculation. The number 60 is the
smallest number that can be divided by the previous five tens digits, namely 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and
is divided by the numbers 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30.One o'clock time is divided into 60 minute,
and one minute is divided into 60 seconds. So a time measurement like "3:23:17" (three
hours, 23 minutes and 17 seconds) can be interpreted as a sexagesimal number, which means
3. 602 +23.60 1+17. 600. As with the ancient Babylonian sexagesimal system, however, each of
the three sexagesimal digits in this number (3, 23, and 17) is written using the decimal
system.

At the end of the 14th century, the first mechanical clock was invented in Europe. The
Greek astronomer Eratosthenes used the sexagesimal system to divide a circle into 60
degrees. He also uses this system in creating latitudes. Latitude is a line that crosses famous
places on earth today. A century later, hipparchus also made latitudes parallel to the lines of
the earth. This creates a system of longitude in 360 degrees. Hipparchus' findings were
developed by Claudius Ptolemaeus who divided 360 degrees into small parts. The watch face
is divided into half, third, quarter, sometimes even 12 parts. The minute unit was only
displayed in the 16th century, when more sophisticated watches were created.

CHAPTER III
CLOSING
 Babylon is an ancient civilisation in Mesopotamia's south-central area. According to
history, the Babylonians were the first to write from left to right and produced several written
texts. Since the 1850s, more than 400 clay slabs have been unearthed as sources of
Babylonian history. The plates are written in a nail-shaped font.

Another achievement in mathematics is the discovery of determining the value of the

square root, even Babylonian scientists have demonstrated the Pythagorean theory, long
before Pythagoras himself came up with his theory.

The use of sexagesimal numbers can be seen in the use of time units, namely 60
seconds for a minute, 60 minutes for an hour, and in the use of angle units, namely 360 (60 x
6) degrees for one rotation.circle, as well as the use of seconds and minutes on circular arcs to
represent fractions of degrees. This great advance in mathematics occurred for two reasons.
First, the number 60 has multiple divisors, namely 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30, which
makes calculations easier. In addition, the Babylonians had a real number system where the
digits written on the left had a larger value such as base 10 numbers.

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