Three thousand years of sexagesimal numbers in Mesopotamian mathematical texts (Q1728759)

The author, who has contributed so much to the history of Mesopotamian mathematics, shows in this article selected examples of the development of sexagesimal numbers characteristic for this mathematical tradition. He begins with possible sexagesimal numbers in pre-literate counting systems, as are attested both in Mesopotamia and in Elam (southern Iran). These interpretations remain necessarily speculative, but with the invention of writing one can be more certain of the meaning of texts. The author explains in detail the examples he uses. Although most of the tablets were published before, such explanations had not been given by earlier authors. Unpublished tablets are also included, like a table of reciprocals recently found, which does \textit{not} use sexagesimal numbers. The author succeeds in explaining the calculation procedure for each of the number pairs in the text. He then uses the insights from this text to give a new explanation of the choice of numbers for which multiplication tables were devised in Old Babylonian times (first half of the second millennium BC). Around 2000 BC, the sexagesimal counting numbers became the basis of a place-value system with floating point. The author shows examples of school exercises for learning to calculate with these numbers, and then proceeds to discuss impressive tables of many-place reciprocals calculated around 200 BC when such tables may have been used for astronomical purposes. He presents a new analysis of the tablet AO 6456 of the Louvre, published first in 1922 by F. Thureau-Dangin, \textit{Tablettes d'Uruk}, No. 31. He concludes with an overview of the concepts required and available at the end of the third millennium to invent the sexagesimal place-value numbers.