There is a papyrus in the Rhind collection at the British Museum[31] which gives us an instructive glimpse of arithmetic and geometry as these sciences were understood on the banks of the Nile. It is the work of one Aahmes, and contains rules for calculations both of an arithmetical and a geometrical character. The arithmetical problems mostly concern measures of corn and fruit, and deal particularly with such questions as the division of a number of measures among a given number of persons, the number of loaves or jars of beer that certain measures will yield, and the wages due to the workmen for a certain piece of work. It corresponds exactly, in fact, to the description of Egyptian arithmetic which Plato has given us in the _Laws_, where he tells us that the children learnt along with their letters to solve problems in the distribution of apples and wreaths to greater or smaller numbers of people, the pairing of boxers and wrestlers, and so forth.[32] This is clearly the origin of the art which the Greeks called λογιστική, and they certainly borrowed that from Egypt; but there is not the slightest trace of what the Greeks called ἀριθμητική, or the scientific study of numbers. Footnote 31: I am indebted for most of the information which follows to Cantor’s _Vorlesungen über Geschichte der Mathematik_, vol. i. pp. 46-63. See also Gow’s _Short History of Greek Mathematics_, §§ 73-80; and Milhaud, _La science grecque_, pp. 91 sqq. The discussion in the last-named work is of special value because it is based on M. Rodet’s paper in the _Bulletin de la Société Mathématique_, vol. vi., which in some important respects supplements the interpretation of Eisenlohr, on which the earlier accounts depend. Footnote 32: Plato, _Laws_, 819 b 4, μήλων τέ τινων διανομαὶ καὶ στεφάνων πλείοσιν ἄμα καὶ ἐλάττοσιν ἁρμοττόντων ἀριθμῶν τῶν αὐτῶν, καὶ πυκτῶν καὶ παλαιστῶν ἐφεδρείας τε καὶ συλλήξεως ἐν μέρει καὶ ἐφεξῆς καὶ ὡς πεφύκασι γίγνεσθαι. καὶ δὴ καὶ παίζοντες, φιάλας ἅμα χρυσοῦ καὶ χαλκοῦ καὶ ἀργύρου καὶ τοιούτων τινῶν ἄλλων κεραννύντες, οἱ δὲ καὶ ὅλας πως διαδιδόντες. In its context, the passage implies that no more than this could be learnt in Egypt.