Plimpton 322
Plimpton 322 is a Babylonian clay tablet, notable as containing an example of Babylonian mathematics. It has number 322 in the G.A. Plimpton Collection at Columbia University. This tablet, believed to have been written around 1800 BC, has a table of four columns and 15 rows of numbers in the cuneiform script of the period.
| Plimpton 322 | |
|---|---|
The Plimpton 322 clay tablet, with numbers written in cuneiform script | |
| Height | 9 cm |
| Width | 13 cm |
| Created | c. 1800 BC |
| Present location | New York City, New York, United States |
This table lists two of the three numbers in what are now called Pythagorean triples, i.e., integers a, b, and c satisfying a2 + b2 = c2. From a modern perspective, a method for constructing such triples is a significant early achievement, known long before the Greek and Indian mathematicians discovered solutions to this problem. At the same time, one should recall the tablet's author was a scribe, rather than a professional mathematician; it has been suggested that one of his goals may have been to produce examples for school problems.
There has been significant scholarly debate on the nature and purpose of the tablet. For readable popular treatments of this tablet see Robson (2002) recipient of the Lester R. Ford Award for expository excellence in mathematics or, more briefly, Conway & Guy (1996). Robson (2001) is a more detailed and technical discussion of the interpretation of the tablet's numbers, with an extensive bibliography.