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In the history of mathematics, differences between ancient Egyptian and ancient Greek mathematics have been emphasized while their parallels have often been overlooked. While the source material of the earliest Greek mathematical texts is probably too scarce to trace its beginnings, a comparison of extant Egyptian and Greek sources reveals not only differences but also similarities. It is noteworthy in this respect that specific links to Egyptian and also Mesopotamian mathematical sources can be drawn, which indicates that the mathematical knowledge of both cultures served as the basis for the evolution of Greek mathematics. Instead of contrasting Greek mathematics with its Egyptian predecessors, our understanding of ancient Greek mathematics and its development might benefit from studying the transmission and common features of these mathematical cultures.

Mathematicians often consider ancient Greece as the birthplace of their subject. Names like Pythagoras or Euclid are still used in modern mathematics in the designation of theorems (Pythagorean theorem) or areas (Euclidean geometry), establishing a link between modern mathematics and its supposed origin in ancient Greece.

The study of metrology in the Ancient Near East has, since the 19th century, approached ancient political and economical reality by quantifying and estimating, among other things, the dimensions of urban centres and the number of rations, or war booty, delivered to palaces. A new interdisciplinary practice, from the perspective of the social and cultural history of Mesopotamian metrology, has developed over the last few decades, taking into account the scribal background and weighing and measuring practices in daily life.

The study of metrology has always been important for archaeologists and philologists of the Ancient Near East. Since the first decipherments of cuneiform writing and the first excavations in the 19th centuryce, metrological research has usually focused on reconstructing the relative values in each measures system (capacity, length, area, weight), that is to say, the values by which one unit of the system was converted into another, either as a multiple or a submultiple, as well as of identifying the absolute values of these units, expressed in our modern system (litre, kilogram, meter, etc.). Metrology has been traditionally used for economic history of the Ancient Near East, by providing quantitative data which inform us about, among other things, livestock farming, available resources in the organizing communities (households, cities, temples, and palaces), commercial transactions, or war booty. This led to the Marvin Powell’s synthesis in the 1980s, which still represents a key reference work in ancient Near Eastern research.