摘要：In the late 1920’s the existence of both Old and Late Babylonian
mathemat ical cuneiform texts with solutions to
second-degree problems were discovered at O. Neu gebauer’s
path-breaking history of mathematics seminar in G.ttingen.
The announcement of the discovery was received with
“immense amazement” (H.yrup 2002: 1, fn. 2). In this
paper will be discussed, for the fi rst time, the existence of
an even older cunei form text, YBC 3879, a juridical fi eld
division document from the Sumerian Ur III period, in
which unequivocally appear solutions to a series of seconddegree
problems. Ironically, a copy of the text in question
was published (although without any translation or
commen tary) in a volume of Miscellaneous Inscriptions in
the Yale Babylonian Collection by A. T. Clay in 1915, that
is more than a decade before the mentioned sensational discovery
at Neugebauer’s seminar!
