Babylonians and the Contributions to Math - 1605 Words

Essay #1: History The history of ancient Babylonia is really long, but this essay is a short and to the point summery of the entire history. The history of Babylonia started near the end of the year 2000 BC, when invaders were attacking the Sumer kingdom. Sumer was a powerful kingdom in the western part of Asia, and it some what occupied what would become Babylonia. After the kingdom of Sumer was destroyed the city-states of Larsa and Isin came into settle on the land once occupied by Sumer. This led to fighting between Larsa and Isin. After hundreds of years of fighting Larsa defeated Isin. But, just as Larsa beat Isin, Hammurabi came to power in the city of Babylonia. Hammurabi went on to defeat Larsa and start a vast kingdom in the†¦show more content†¦A female goddess created Gilamesh, who became very powerful and strong. He had his way with women and used them as objects. Women in this story had no status in the political or social world. In the some of the laws of Hammurabi, the laws s howed that men had ownership of their wives. Like the one that says, If a man take a women to wife, but has no intercourse with him, she is no wife. This means that if a wife does not offer herself to her husband than she is not considered his wife. And if a wife does wrong to her husband she must jump into a river for her husband. This act almost always ended in death because she drowned. The culture of ancient Babylonia revolved mostly around their art and written lore. But, women had no say in politics, cultural, or anything else. Men were considered superior. Essay #3: Mathematics The Babylonians had an advanced number system, in some ways more advanced than our present system. The Babylonians divided the day into 24 hours and each hour into 60 minutes and each minute into 60 seconds. This form of time keeping has survived for more than 4000 years. Two tablets found at Senkerah on the Euphrates River in 1854 date from 2000 BC. They give squares of the number up to 59 and cubes of the numbers up to 32. One major disadvantage of the Babylonian system is their lack of a zero (this meant that the numbers did not have a unique representation, but it required the context to make clear whether the number 1Show MoreRelatedThe History of Algebra916 Words   |  4 Pagesbeginning of time. The development of algebraic notation progressed through out three stages: the rhetorical stage, the syncopated stage, and the symbolic stage with which we are use to using in our daily usage of algebra. In ancient civilization math was used to help leaders to strategically form ho w their troops should be lined up for battle and help decide how to attack their enemies. Algebra was used in the many of these civilizations: Egypt, Babylon, Greece, India, Europe, and most parts ofRead MoreEarliest Civilization is the Region of Mesopotamia Because of Their Language of Cuneiform1431 Words   |  6 Pagesof years later. 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