Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 29 (P. Oxy. 29) is a fragment of the second book of the '' Elements'' of

Euclid Euclid (; ; BC) was an ancient Greek mathematician active as a geometer and logician. Considered the "father of geometry", he is chiefly known for the '' Elements'' treatise, which established the foundations of geometry that largely domina ...

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

. It was discovered by Grenfell and

Hunt Hunting is the Human activity, human practice of seeking, pursuing, capturing, and killing wildlife or feral animals. The most common reasons for humans to hunt are to obtain the animal's body for meat and useful animal products (fur/hide (sk ...

in 1897 in

Oxyrhynchus Oxyrhynchus ( ; , ; ; ), also known by its modern name Al-Bahnasa (), is a city in Middle Egypt located about 160 km south-southwest of Cairo in Minya Governorate. It is also an important archaeological site. Since the late 19th century, t ...

. The fragment was originally dated to the end of the third century or the beginning of the fourth century, although more recent scholarship suggests a date of 75–125 CE. Bill Casselman
One of the oldest extant diagrams from Euclid
/ref> It is housed in the library of the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

(in a ''University Museum'', E 2748). The text was published by Grenfell and Hunt in 1898.P. Oxy. 29
at the Oxyrhynchus Online

Description

The manuscript was written on

papyrus Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, ''Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'' or ''papyruses'') can a ...

in sloping irregular

uncial Uncial is a majuscule script (written entirely in capital letters) commonly used from the 4th to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes. Uncial letters were used to write Greek and Latin, as well as Gothic, and are the current style for ...

letters, with no

iota adscript Iota (; uppercase Ι, lowercase ι; ) is the ninth letter of the Greek alphabet. It was derived from the Phoenician alphabet, Phoenician letter Yodh. Letters that arose from this letter include the Latin alphabet, Latin I and J, the Cyrillic � ...

, and with slight spelling errors. The fragment measures 85 by 152 mm. The fragment provides a statement of the 5th proposition of Book 2 of the ''Elements'', together with an unlabelled diagram, and a tiny part of the preceding proposition. No part of the proof is provided. In translation, the statement is "If a straight line be cut into equal and unequal segments, the rectangle contained by the unequal segments of the whole together with the square on the straight line between the points of section is equal to the square on the half."

References

029 1st-century manuscripts 2nd-century manuscripts 3rd-century manuscripts 4th-century manuscripts Euclid {{OxyrhynchusGR-stub

Description

See also

References