36 2. MATHEMATICAL CULTURES Itexts deciphered and analyzed. The most complete analysis of these is the 1935
two-volume work by Otto Neugebauer (1899 1992), Mathematische. Ke.ilschrifttexte,
recently republished by Springer-Verlag. A more up-to-date study has been pub-
lished by the Oxford scholar Eleanor Rohsou (1999).Cuneiform tablet BMP 15 285. © The British Museum.Since our present concern is to introduce authors and their works and discuss
motivation, there is little more to say about the cuneiform tablets at this point,
except to speculate on the uses for these tablets. Some of the tablets that have
been discussed by historians of mathematics appear to be "classroom materials,"
written by teachers as exercises for students. This conclusion is based on the
fact that the answers so often "come out even." As Robson (1995, p. 11, quoted
by Melville, 2002, p. 2) states. "Problems were constructed from answers known
beforehand." Melville provides an example of a different kind from tablet 4652 of
the Yale Babylonian Collection in which the figures are not adjusted this way, but a