Pistol Wrote:
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> What I find to be a head scratcher; people come up
> with these esoteric concepts without explaining at
> all why the Egyptians were trying to prove the
> size of the planet, to what benefit were they
> engaged in such an enterprise?

Exactly. Mathematically, they were accountants. They had methods of recording and calculating grain silos and more, as we see from the Mathematical papyri. Ditto with measuring field sizes.

> The Greeks you
> could say were prone to philosophical questions
> and perhaps would present such questions, whoAThat was designed for astronomical calculations, and we know they did these because the Olympics dates and certain festivals were based on moon position and so forth (just as the Aztecs and Maya used planet positions to predict good times to wage warfare and so forth.)

> I have always
> squinted one eye when thinking about how just as
> Alexander conquered Egypt what followed was an
> immediate wealth of mathematics, astronomy and
> medicine attributed to the Greeks, are they
> imposters to this knowledge?

You can chalk this up to the Ptolemies and their love of libraries. Ptolemy I Soter started the Library of Alexandria, which included a research university and other educational and research facilities. He came to this through Alexander, who was taught by the famed polymath, Aristotle.

-- Byrd
Moderator, Hall of Ma'at