A faster method for multiplying very big numbers

The multiplication of integers is a problem that has kept mathematicians busy since Antiquity. The "Babylonian" method we learn at school requires us to multiply each digit of the first number by each digit of the second ...

Mathematical mystery of ancient Babylonian clay tablet solved

UNSW Sydney scientists have discovered the purpose of a famous 3700-year old Babylonian clay tablet, revealing it is the world's oldest and most accurate trigonometric table, possibly used by ancient mathematical scribes ...

A 3,800-year journey from classroom to classroom

Thirty-eight hundred years ago, on the hot river plains of what is now southern Iraq, a Babylonian student did a bit of schoolwork that changed our understanding of ancient mathematics. The student scooped up a palm-sized ...

Huge find throws new light on ancient Iraq

(Phys.org) —University of Manchester archaeologists have started the excavation of an enormous building complex in Iraq, thought to be around 4,000 years old.

Huge dictionary project completed after 90 years

An ambitious project to identify, explain and provide citations for the words written in cuneiform on clay tablets and carved in stone by Babylonians, Assyrians and others in Mesopotamia between 2500 B.C. and A.D. 100 has ...