To an unknown mathematician!

It is said in the New Testament that the apostle Paul, when addressing the Athenians, complimented them for having inscribed “To an unknown god” onto one of their altars. Reading the Babylonian tablet YBC 7289 (Yale Babylonian Collection), one might well be tempted to erect another altar to this unknown mathematician who, nearly four thousand years ago, engraved into clay what is for us one of the most extraordinary mathematical documents that exists. The YBC 7289 tablet was written between 1900 and 1600 BCE. Its round shape and size (about 8 cm in diameter) make it easy to handle, which indicates that it is probably the work of an apprentice. An object which, in its time, was perhaps a mere “student’s copy” has thus for us become a major testimony to how the Babylonians perceived mathematics. As no treaty on this subject has apparently survived from the period, it is difficult, if not impossible, to recreate the context in which mathematical study took place. Among the mathematical clay tablets we possess, many are of an educational nature, setting out the terms of a problem followed by its solution. Rare are tablets such as the YBC 7289, which, in such a disproportionately small space, provide so much food for thought on how the Babylonians envisaged the abstract notion of number. @@@@@@@