Cuneiform texts and mathematics history

• Grant number: 09/01389-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: August 17, 2009
• End date: January 16, 2010
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of Science
• Principal Investigator: Carlos Henrique Barbosa Gonçalves
• Grantee: Carlos Henrique Barbosa Gonçalves
• Host Investigator: Hermann Hunger
• Host Institution: Escola de Artes, Ciências e Humanidades (EACH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Vienna, Austria

Abstract

This document presents a research project on history of science, taking as document corpus the mathematical texts from ancient Mesopotamia, composed in the Akkadian language and written in cuneiform, especially in the Old Babylonian period. It aims at deepening my knowledge on the language and the writing system and to producing a paper on the points of the Mesopotamian mathematical language that represent problems being discussed by the researchers in the field. This project will be carried out at the Institut für Orientalistik of the University of Vienna, under the supervision and orientation of Professor Hermann Hunger, in the five-month period from Aug 17, 2009 to Jan 16, 2010. We will work with weakly meetings for the discussion of Mesopotamian mathematical texts, as well as for the writing of the paper. Due to the absence of systematic studies dealing with the issue of the problems of the mathematical language, our work will meet a need of the field. It will, therefore, keep our research in the sphere of the international discussions on the subject. As a result of this analysis, the field will get better informed about Mesopotamian scribes' textual habits as regards mathematics, which will provide, to historians of mathematics and science, additional parameters to dealing with this moment of the history of knowledge and, to ancient historians, elements to enriching the global view of the Near East history. (AU)