A 4,000-year-old scribe calculated a curved basket's surface area, by a disputed method
Problem 10 of the Moscow Mathematical Papyrus asks for the surface area of a basket shape, giving a method that uses a value close to pi and works if the basket is treated as a hemisphere of a given size. Work out how an ancient Egyptian scribe could have solved this around 1850 BCE, using only the arithmetic available at the time, with no formula for a sphere's surface area yet in existence.
Reveal the answer
The scribe's steps match treating the shape as a hemisphere and computing its curved surface using an approximation of pi, long before pi was understood as a constant, and over 1,500 years before Archimedes gave a rigorous formula for a sphere's surface area in ancient Greece. Historians still debate exactly how the scribe derived the method, since the papyrus states the steps without explaining the reasoning behind them.
— Unknown ancient Egyptian scribe, Moscow Mathematical Papyrus — Problem 10, c. 1850 BCE