#babylon

#babylon

Oldest Ever Drawing of a Ghost Discovered at the British MuseumA Babylonian clay tablet stored at the British Museum has revealed a previously overlooked image. A portion of the tablet appears blank, but there is a barely-discernible carving showing a man being led away by a woman who is holding his hands bound by a rope. The tablet is 3,500 years old, which makes this the oldest known drawing of a ghost ever. How do we know the man is supposed to be a ghost? Because the back of the tablet contains text that are instructions for how to get rid of a lonely ghost. See, the ghost is haunting the living because he is in need of female companionship. The ancient cuneiform writing lays out a ritual in which one would make figurines of the ghost and a woman and place them in a romantic setting with all the supplies for a night of earthly bliss.Dr. Irving Finkel of the British Museum lays out the story in his forthcoming book The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies. Get an overview of the story, including more details of the exorcism ritual at The Guardian. -via Strange Company#ghost #Babylon #cuneiform

Ancient Clay Tablet Showed that Applied Geometry was Used in Babylon 1,000 Years Before PythagorasAn ancient clay tablet that's been hiding in plain sight in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum in Turkey for over a century turned out to be the oldest example of applied geometry.The 3,700-year-old tablet known as Si.427 dated from the Old Babylonian period. "It’s the only known example of a cadastral document from the OB period, which is a plan used by surveyors to define land boundaries," said Daniel Mansfield of University of New South Wales in Australia. "In this case, it tells us legal and geometric details about a field that’s split after some of it was sold off," he added.The tablet uses number sets known as Pythagorean triplesto make accurate  right angles, but it was made 1,000 years before the Greek philosopher Pythagoras developed the geometric principles now known as the Pythagorean theorem.Image: University of New South Wales#math #mathematics #Babylon #claytablet #appliedgeometry #geometry #PythagoreanTriples #PythagoreanTheorem #landsurveyor