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 PREFACE

the past ﬁfteen years the preparation of the work now presented to the public has occupied my leisure hours, in an otherwise active business life. In 1910 my wife and I made a trip to Egypt and became much interested in its monuments and literature. The British Museum copies of the Book of the Dead and of the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus were acquired two years later and I soon commenced an intensive study of the latter. This was inspired by my interest in the history of mathematics and in the ancient Egyptian civilization.

The pleasure derived from such study has been great and especially have I enjoyed the intimate knowledge which I thereby gained regarding the reasoning power of those ancient people. I venture to suggest that if one were to ask for that single attribute of the human intellect which would most clearly indicate the degree of civilization of a race, the answer would be, the power of close reasoning, and that this power could be best determined in a general way by the mathematical skill which members of the race displayed. Judged by this standard the Egyptians of the nineteenth century before Christ had a high degree of civilization.

The great advance in our present knowledge of the Egyptian language would of itself have justified the publication in 1923 of Professor Peet’s scholarly work on the Rhind papyrus, marking such a notable advance over the remarkable translation and commentary by Eisenlohr forty-six years earlier. It seemed to me, however, that there was room for yet another work on this subject intended for mathematicians and the general public, rather than for Egyptologists who will ﬁnd philological matters fully discussed by Professor Peet. In my volumes the new contributions may be summarized as follows:

1. A mathematical commentary, in the preparation of which I have been greatly assisted by Doctor Manning who, while associated with me in this work during the past seven years, has displayed scholarly insight and exactness;

2. The very elaborate and notable critical Bibliography of Egyptian Mathematics contributed by Professor Archibald and including