Mathematical lists: from archiving to innovation

International audienceAmong Old Babylonian mathematical cuneiform texts, the “catalogues” and “series texts”, which contain lists of problem statements with no indication for their solution, constitute an interesting but little known corpus. Although catalogues and series texts do share strong stylistic similarities, the types of tablets used, the composition of the colophons, the structure of the lists, and the mechanisms which generate the statements differ. The differences between catalogues and series texts seem to reveal different intellectual projects, and probably reflect the fact that different communities of scribes produced them. These possible divergent traditions may relate to the hypothesized emergence of new mathematical practices at the end of the Old Babylonian period