Page:The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, Volume I.pdf/139

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PREFATORY NOTE

The hope is entertained that no item of prime importance may be found wanting in this Bibliography which, within certain limits, has been made as comprehensive as possible. Apart from publications devoted wholly to topics of the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, numerous references are given to other mathematical, scientific, Egyptological, and popular papers and works. Consideration of these as a whole enables the student more truly to appreciate the setting, appeal, and contents of the work. With very few exceptions titles of publications dealing with Egyptian astronomy, time reckoning, contracts, and business documents, have been omitted, and only a few references have been given to the considerable literature on Egyptian metrology. Some titles in the literature of early Babylonian mathematics have been introduced. The list of publications concerning the comparatively late demotic, Greek, and Coptic papyri, and ostraca, perpetuating Egyptian arithmetic methods, has been made as complete as possible. Reviews have occasionally been listed; the value of those written by well-known scholars will be readily recognized.

Critical and explanatory notes have also been added in connection with some of the items, more particularly where the titles did not appear to be sufiiciently descriptive, in the hope that they might be suggestive to the inquirer wishing to inform himself rather thoroughly on questions of the Papyrus. No inference should be drawn from the absence of a note regarding the contents of an item. Warning comments, appended to several items of a trivial nature for the purposes of this Bibliography, may save waste of time. Since everything listed has been personally inspected it is hoped that slips found may not be numerous.

Items indicated as trivial for the purposes of this Bibliography have been listed partly because references to such items without characterization are frequent in the literature, partly because such items are often by scholars whose brief though well considered remarks might be of both value and interest, and partly on the basis of considerations including the output in this connection of a given country. Unimportant