Alexander Jones - A Greek Papyrus Containing Babylonian Lunar Theory (790.0 Kb)
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The papyrus presented here, which is owned by Prof. M. L. Colker (University of Virginia), was first described, as a writing exercise, in two dealers' catalogues.1 Subsequently Dr David Jordan identified the mathematical nature of the text on the reverse, and in turn enlisted the assistance of O. Neugebauer.Neugebauer published an article containing photographs of both sides, a partial transliteration of the reverse, and a discussion demonstrating the relation of the numerical table to Babylonian lunar tables.2 Neugebauer fu... More >>>Book can be downloaded.
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The papyrus presented here, which is owned by Prof. M. L. Colker (University of Virginia), was first described, as a writing exercise, in two dealers' catalogues.1 Subsequently Dr David Jordan identified the mathematical nature of the text on the reverse, and in turn enlisted the assistance of O. Neugebauer.
Neugebauer published an article containing photographs of both sides, a partial transliteration of the reverse, and a discussion demonstrating the relation of the numerical table to Babylonian lunar tables.2 Neugebauer fully appreciated that the papyrus was a document of remarkable importance for the history of astronomy but because he set out his discovery with characteristic brevity and understatement in a volume devoted ostensibly to assyriology, few who are not specialists in ancient mathematical astronomy know about it.
The present article hopes to bring the papyrus to wider attention, and to supplement Neugebauer's article in several respects, most importantly by providing a fuller description and the first proper transcription of the astronomical table.
About Author:
Alexander Jones studied Classics at the University of British Columbia and the history of the ancient mathematical sciences in the Department of the History of Mathematics at Brown University. Before coming to NYU, he was for sixteen years on the faculty of the Department of Classics and the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto. His work centers on the history and transmission of the mathematical sciences, especially astronomy.
He is the author of several editions of Greek scientific texts, among them Pappus of Alexandria's commentary on the corpus of Hellenistic geometrical treatises known as the "Treasury of Analysis"; an anonymous Byzantine astronomical handbook based on Islamic sources; and a collection of about two hundred fragmentary astronomical texts, tables, and horoscopes from the papyri excavated a century ago by Grenfell and Hunt at Oxyrhynchus. His current research interests include the contacts between Babylonian and Greco-Roman astronomy and astrology, the Antikythera Mechanism and other artifacts of Hellenistic and Roman period astronomy, and the scientific work of Claudius Ptolemy. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society, a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a full member of the Academie Internationale d'Histoire des Sciences, and recipient of several awards and honors including a Guggenheim fellowship and the Francis Bacon Award in the History of Science.
Together with Christine Proust, he curated ISAW's 2011 exhibition on Babylonian Mathematics, Before Pythagoras, and he also curated the current ISAW exhibition Time and Cosmos in Greco-Roman Antiquity.
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