The instructions correspond exactly to methods invented in the ancient state of Babylonia several centuries earlier (400-300 BC). They are the only known texts from Greco-Roman Egypt with instructions for computing astronomical phenomena with Babylonian methods. The instructional texts date to 1-50 AD and are written in the Demotic language, a late stage of ancient Egyptian, on two 'ostraca' (potsherds, or broken pieces of ceramic material). The study was carried out by Mathieu Ossendrijver, a historian of ancient science at Humboldt University Berlin and Exzellenzcluster Topoi, and Andreas Winkler, an Egyptologist at Oxford University's Faculty of Oriental Studies. ![]() Adapted from an article by Exzellenzcluster Topoi.Įgyptian astronomers computed the position of the planet Mercury using methods originating from Babylonia, finds a study of two Egyptian instructional texts from Oxford's Ashmolean Museum.
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