I'm an Egyptologist who lives in Montevideo, Uruguay. Our
institution has 22 pages in Internet on our subject at:
http://members.spree.com/juancast/
Ancient Egypt, as you know, was one of the world's earliest
civilizations where some of the first steps mankind gave in the
study of mathematics took place. However, in spite of what
their accomplishments in other areas might indicate (such as the
pyramids, for instance), and in spite of what some authors
(including Mathematicians) have said, dazzled by such monuments,
the opinion most Egyptologists have is that ancient Egyptian
mathematics were appropriate for the practical purposes the
ancient Egyptians had in mind but lacking in abstract thought,
generalizations and theory, which the Greeks would introduce
much later, inspired by the work of their Egyptian predecessors.
The problem, as I see it, is that with the limited information we
have (papyri and other texts), I'm not sure how reliable can be
our conclusions on the nature of ancient Egyptian mathematics
considering that most Egyptologists don't have a training in
mathematics. On the other hand, conclusions drawn by
Mathematicians dealing with this subject, without the advice of
Egyptologists, is often disregarded because their conclusions have
to agree with what we know of that ancient civilization, as an
overall picture, their true accomplishments as compared to the
unjustified ones invented by fertile imaginations, as is so common
in the popular literature.
Given the very healthy tendency nowadays to study such difficult
subjects involving multidisciplinarian teams, in which members
can check their conclusions with each other rather than going off on
tangents of their own (pardon my use of a "mathematical" term),
with the risks that attitude implies, I think it would be interesting
to
know what is the opinion of Mathematician members of this list
on the History of Mathematics, on this subject I'm bringing up.
Sincerely,
J. J. Castillos
(for private email, I prefer:
juancast@yahoo.com)