Unidentified Egyptian geometry

History of Egyptian mathematics (01A16) History of Greek and Roman mathematics (01A20) History of geometry (51-03) History of convex and discrete geometry (52-03)

Review text

The aim of this paper is to set straight some accepted (or perceived accepted) interpretations in the history of ancient Greek and Egyptian geometry. Given the weak causal nexus in the arguments presented in favor of the author's theses, and the absence of a referral to works reflecting the actual consensus among Western historians, these theses will have a hard time being accepted by historians. The paper consists of three parts in which separate ancient Greek or Egyptian geometric problems are discussed. The first part is devoted to the following theorem of Archimedes: ``Let \(A\), \(B\) and \(C\) be three points on a circle \({\mathcal C}\) , with \(AB> BC\). Let \(D\) be the intersection point, on the same side of \(AC\) as \(B\), of the perpendicular bisector of \(AC\) with \({\mathcal C}\), let \(E\) be the foot of the perpendicular from \(D\) to \(AB\). Then \(AE=EB+BC\). This theorem is proved on the basis of Euclid's \textit{Elements}, Book I, with a remark, that the theorem ``still holds in the pseudo-Euclidean case (actually more is true: If we denote by \({\mathcal A}\) plane absolute geometry (axiomatized by the plane axioms of Hilbert's first three groups of axioms), and denote Archimedes's theorem by \(A\), and the statement that there exists a rectangle by \(R\), then \({\mathcal A}\vdash A\leftrightarrow R\), as can be easily deduced from the author's proof). The historical conclusions of this section are: ``the three proofs published by al-Biruni should not be attributed to Archimedes, since his ingenious intuition could not overlook the optimal proof presented above. The author also presumes that the theorem itself was known long before Archimedes, perhaps by the ancient Egyptians, a presumption for which the author cites an Egyptian legend on \textit{Kheri heb} Djedjemānkh. The second part is devoted to what the author refers to as ``Euclid's theorem (for which the author claims authorship in two papers, [Shikin, E. V. (ed.), Some questions of differential geometry in the large. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society. Transl., Ser. 2, Am. Math. Soc. 176, 97--150 (1996; Zbl 0865.52003)] and [What is geometry ``in the large? (Russian). Current Life, Science and Technology: Series ``Mathematics and Cybernetics 86/12. Moscow: ``Znanie (1986)]): ``Equally formed closed convex polyhedra are equal if their corresponding plane angles are equal and the areas of corresponding faces are equal. Here the author discusses, without any reference to Heath's discussion of the matter (who refers to Simson, Legendre, and Cauchy) the possible meanings of Definitions 9 and 10 in Book XI of Euclid's \textit{Elements}, to conclude that ``equal and similar plane polygons in Definition 10 are similar polygons of equal areas. Thus we see that the two interpretations of the notion ``equal and similar discussed are essentially different [one being ``equal and similar figures are just congruent polygons]; this difference means clearly that Archimedes was never a student of Euclid in Alexandria. These matters, regarding the history of the rigidity of polyhedra, had been dealt with in \textit{P. Gario} [Archimede 33, 53--69 (1981; Zbl 0473.52005)]. The third part is devoted to ancient Egyptian geometry, to what the author calls ``Ahmes' theorem. Here the author presents an original proof of how the approximate quadrature of the circle provided in the Ahmes papyrus, Problem 50, was obtained. The proof is based on the author's reconstruction of a computation found in the Moscow papyrus, which he considers to have been corrupted by scribes transcribing texts they did not understand, and \textit{not} on Problem 48 of the Ahmes papyrus. This assumes that both papyri deal with the same problem ``formulated by Ahmes! \{Reviewer's remarks: All references, with one exception, which is an English translation of the author's work, are in Russian, even in the few instances in which their original language was not Russian. Beside having excluded a century of research by Western historians of mathematics, this also leads to unusual spellings of names, which should have been corrected by the editor: ``Prockl for Proclus, ``Thote for Thoth, ``Herihab Geageamankh for \textit{Kheri heb} (lector priest) Djedjemānkh.\}

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