Contrasting aims and approaches in the study of ancient Egyptian mathematics in the 1920s

The modern academic study of ancient Egyptian mathematics emerged in the mid-nineteenth century as the decipherment of ancient texts revealed the arithmetical and geometrical notions and processes employed by the ancient Egyptians; most of what is now known stemmed from the discovery and study of the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus in the 1860s and 1870s. However, despite the unearthing of a small number of additional sources, the study of ancient Egyptian mathematics remained quite closely focused on the Rhind Papyrus, with many texts simply restating what had already been written about it. In this paper, we discuss how the topic re-emerged in the 1920s in a more fully contextualised form. Particular attention is paid to the contributions of the Egyptologist Thomas Eric Peet (1882–1934) and the historian of mathematics Otto Neugebauer (1899–1990). We argue that by the end of the 1920s, a topic that had hitherto largely been the preserve of Egyptologists had passed into the hands of mathematicians