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30 novembre 2019
- handle: 10670/1.uaommk
- isbn: 978-3-030-20392-4
- hal: hal-02391150
- doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-20393-1_4
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info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.1007/978-3-030-20393-1_4
Mots-clés
Cuneiform mathematics Old Babylonian period Nippur Scribal school Curriculum Progression Sexagesimal place-value notation Metrological table ProcedureSujets proches
Structures Edifices HallsCiter ce document
Christine Proust, « How Did Mathematics Masters Work Four Thousand Years Ago? Curricula and Progressions in Mesopotamia », HALSHS : archive ouverte en Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société, ID : 10.1007/978-3-030-20393-1_4
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Résumé
Education in Mesopotamia is remarkably well documented. The reason for this abundance of sources is the nature of the writing support that was used in the Ancient Near East, namely, clay, an indestructible material that has survived from antiquity to the present day. School exercises have been found by the tens of thousands during archaeological excavations in Iraq, Syria, and Iran. The work of masters left traces on many documents, for example, mathematical exercises for beginners or sets of problems for advanced students. These traces allow us to partly reconstruct the organization of teaching. In this paper, I focus on didactical structures conveyed by sets of mathematical texts from diverse levels of education. I show the diversity of these structures, distinguishing, for example, the curricula produced by long-term institutional mechanisms, from progressions reflecting specific teaching projects of masters. I try to grasp the mathematical notions conveyed by the different didactical structures. To do this, I rely on homogeneous sets of documents produced by quite well-identified communities of students or masters. A discussion on the relevance of the concept of “resource system” in the context of scribal schools is proposed in conclusion.