Cuneiform Discovery: YBC 7302 area of circle pi approximation Babylon — E8 Intelligence Research

**YBC 7302: The Circle Squared by Twelve** **Tablet & Provenance:** YBC 7302 (Yale Babylonian Collection), Old Babylonian period (c. 1800–1600 BCE), likely Sippar. It is a single-exercise mathematical tablet, not a table list, preserving a complete problem-procedure-solution format in Akkadian cuneiform. **Mathematical Content:** The tablet calculates the area of a circle given its circumference. The problem states: *"The circumference is 60. What is the area? You, by your procedure..."* The scribe does not measure a diameter; the circumference *is* the primary datum, reflecting the practical surveyor's reality of measuring a circular field by pacing its perimeter. **Numbers & Calculation:** 1. **Given:** Circumference *C* = 60 (written as **1,0** in sexagesimal place-value notation). 2. **Operation:** Square the circumference: 1,0 × 1,0 = **1,0,0** (3,600 decimal). 3. **Coefficient:** Multiply by the reciprocal of 12 (*igi 12*). Author: Andrew Stewart Caldin, Independent Researcher, UK. Part of the E8 Intelligence Research series. Platform: e8intelligence.com