How Did Ancient Civilizations Use Maths In Ancient Egypt And Babylon

Introduction

Both ancient Egypt and Babylon had great civilizations and were the first to use numbers for more than just counting and record keeping, and they both developed systems of arithmetic (Allen, 2001, p.1). They used computation to find area, volume, circumference, and both used fractions. For both, the arithmetic was used for distribution of goods and the geometry for building. Their mathematics was very practical. What survives from both civilizations is records of problems solved by example. There is no record of generalizing principles or teaching principles supported by examples. This lack of mathematical theory limited the expansion of mathematics. These ancient civilizations developed practical ways to solve systems of equations and quadratic equations. Their math was practical, not theoretical. They did not represent the linear function as a line on a coordinate plane. They did not create theories to explain its behavior. They presented answers, not principles on the relationship between the numbers. They never developed the conic sections because they did not need to teach the mathematical principles of the parabola or ellipse. Math was taught “by example rather than by principle”

It contains exercises and mathematics problems designed for the instruction of math students or scribes. The papyrus includes problems with fractions, arithmetic, algebra, geometry and measurement (Allen, 2001, p.10). The Egyptian decomposed fractions into the sum of unit fractions – i.e. the reciprocals of whole numbers (Allen, 2001, p.9). The exact method for the decomposition into unit fractions “has been widely debated and no general method that works for all n has ever been discovered” (Abdulaziz, 2007). The Egyptians solved linear algebra equations. They found the unknown, called the “keep” using the false position method (Allen, 2001,