Hi Rick,
Try reading the excavation reports and text books written by the archaeologists and experts.
You say the 'record is silent'.
In fact the record is far from silent, it's quite clear what was achieved, and the facts have been established long ago.
There are reasons you are not aware of the facts and have not been exposed to the excavation reports and text books, but's that's another matter.
As for Pi and the Greeks and it being special. It wasn't special to the Ancient Egyptians, however the Circle certainly was. The only reason Pi became special in Greek times is because they became aware of the fact it cannot be expressed as a ratio of two whole numbers - any whole numbers. Archimedes developed a method to derive better and better approximations for it using an itterative process resembling calculus, so that it probably became a well known and used mathematical 'toy' problem, on top of its practical usefulness. Its interesting to see you mention Euclid, and of course Euclid does not mention it at all, just as the pRhind does not mention it at all. Coincidence? well, if its not considered anything special, then why list something so basic as the ration of a radius to perimeter of a circle? You might as well list the ratio of a squares width to perimeter - 4 -.
Anyway, the fact is they DID use it, as Professors Petrie, Verner and Edwards have shown, it wasn't difficult to derive the approximation they used, and they were very good craftmen, so it would be ridiculous to assume they didn't have this approximation, which derived naturally from the process of looking for it (try it and see - I have).
Dave L
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2007 12:40PM by Dave L.