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Topic: Breaking the RMP 2/n table by decoding a 500 AD Coptic document
Replies: 11   Last Post: Sep 14, 2011 6:38 PM

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Milo Gardner

Posts: 1,105
Registered: 12/3/04
Re: thanks
Posted: Sep 14, 2011 6:38 PM
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The 600 AD Akhmim Papyrus (AP) was mentioned by David Fowler as arithmetically closely related to the ciphered 300 BCE Hibeh Papyrus (HP) numbers. The HP reported 27 Greek festival days, within the Egyptian civil calendar, and the length of each day and night, in Fowler's Historia Mathematica 10 (1983) article.

A 2011 Planetmath encyclopedia entry accepts the majority of the 1983 David Fowler analysis

http://planetmath.org/encyclopedia/HibehPapyrus.html

by only adding a least common multiple (LCM) that scaled AP and HP rational numbers to concise unit fraction series. The HP and AP scaling method dates back to the Egyptian Middle Kingdom.

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