Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T05:07:37.540Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Art. VIII.—The Linear Measures of Babylonia about b.c. 2500

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

It is deeply interesting to know how men's minds worked when the world was young. And it is to Babylonia—the cradle of the human race—that we must go for some evidence of this. The low alluvial plains at the head of the Persian Gulf are covered with the remains of primitive cities, palaces, temples, and cemeteries; from one of which, fifty years ago, was disinterred the little slab of unbaked clay which is now to engage, our attention, as embodying the world's earliest known arithmetical system.

Type
Original Communications
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1903

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 258 note 1 The tablet itself is numbered 92,698, and is in the British Museum.

page 259 note 1 In an independent study of the Senkereh tablet it will be found advisable to take the diagrams in the order of their numeration, 1 to 4, rather than that of the columns.

page 263 note 1 Of these exceptions that for 19 is the most unusual. It does not occur on the obverse of the tablet. The distinction between 4 and 40 is thus attained: = 4, = 40.

page 270 note 1 It is unnecessary to remark that the fish-tail is here the sign of an extra wedge.

page 275 note 1 “Découvertes in Chaldée,” by de Sarzec, E., 18841889, plate 15Google Scholar.

page 276 note 1 Article Babylonia, Hastings' Dictionary oi Bible, vol. i, p. 218.

page 276 note 2 Ezekiel vol. of the Polychrome Bible, p. 180, note.

page 280 note 1 As is also done in the character immediately preceding the colophon of the Senkereh tablet.