The Egyptians

Abstract

The Greeks generally assumed that mathematics had its origin in Egypt. For instance, Aristotle writes (Metaphysics A 1)¹: “Thus the mathematical sciences originated in the neighborhood of Egypt, because there the priestly class was allowed leisure.” Herodotus, who knew Egypt better, looked at the more practical side of the matter. When the Nile had flooded an agricultural tract, it became necessary for the purpose of taxation, to determine how much land had been lost; “from this, to my thinking, the Greeks learned the art of measuring land” (Herodotus II 109). And Democritus writes: “No one surpasses me in the construction of lines with proofs, not even the so-called called rope-stretchers among the Egyptians.” The rope-stretchers (“harpedonaptai”), to whom Democritus here refers, are probably surveyors, whose principal measuring instrument is everywhere the stretched cord.²