{
  "author": "ChronologiaOS editorial guides",
  "date": "2026-10-09",
  "department": "Mathematics & Measurement",
  "department_id": "NUMBERS",
  "epistemic_label": "Source guide",
  "epistemic_status": "SOURCE_GUIDE",
  "period": "1550 BCE",
  "place": "Thebes, Upper Egypt",
  "public_sources": [
    {
      "publisher": "British Museum",
      "title": "Rhind Mathematical Papyrus EA10057",
      "type": "Museum object record",
      "url": "https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/Y_EA10057"
    },
    {
      "publisher": "British Museum",
      "title": "Rhind Mathematical Papyrus EA10058",
      "type": "Museum object record",
      "url": "https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/Y_EA10058"
    }
  ],
  "publication_state": "PUBLIC",
  "read_time": "3 min read",
  "sections": [
    {
      "body": "The British Museum's object record for EA10057 describes the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus as a mathematics textbook containing 84 problems and gives a production date of 1550 BCE.",
      "heading": "Start with the record",
      "source": 0
    },
    {
      "body": "The museum's second section, EA10058, names Ahmose as the scribe. Having a scribe's name attached to a copy is unusual, and it anchors the object firmly; it does not by itself tell us when the problems were first composed.",
      "heading": "A named scribe",
      "source": 1
    },
    {
      "body": "The research record notes that the text may derive from earlier material, and it models the object date separately from any possible earlier composition. When a handbook copies older work, the copy's date and the tradition's age need their own evidence.",
      "heading": "Object date versus source tradition"
    },
    {
      "body": "Pick one problem from the papyrus and ask what practical task it would serve. Then ask how you would know whether that method was new in 1550 BCE or already centuries old.",
      "heading": "A question to carry forward"
    }
  ],
  "short_title": "How did an Egyptian scribe do mathematics?",
  "slug": "rhind-papyrus-a-scribes-handbook-of-problems",
  "summary": "Open the British Museum's record for the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, a collection of 84 worked problems, and learn why an object's date and its text's origin are different questions.",
  "tags": [
    "Rhind Papyrus",
    "Egyptian mathematics",
    "Ahmose",
    "Papyrus"
  ],
  "title": "The Rhind Papyrus: a scribe's handbook of problems."
}