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UC 32118B

photograph

This fragment was mentioned by Griffith in his first overview of the Petrie Papyri, but it was not included in his publication of the mathematical fragments. It preserves parts of four columns of a vertically written text.

The first column (x+1) shows - if the reconstruction given here is correct - the final sentence of a problem, the note about the correctness of the result "gmj=k nfr" "What has been found by you is correct". This phrase is common in the Moscow mathematical papyrus, and it may also have been used in at least one of the Berlin mathematical fragments.

The second column (x+2) shows a variation of a typical formula to introduce the given data of a problem "jr Dd n=k zj" "If a man says to you..."

The remaining columns contain an intermediate result and one instruction each: column x+3: "m 2 wAH.xr=k 4 Hr=f r nHH" "as 2. Then you add 4 to it until eternity". column x+4: "m gs DA.t m 1 jrj" "as one half, while the remainder is 1. [Then you] calculate".

Unfortunately this is not enough to reconstruct the problem.


 

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