The Legacy Of Egypt

178 Science
practical applications of their knowledge, centuries before the
Greeks, who were primarily theorists in all the arts and sciences.
Our concepts of the origin of scientific knowledge have had
to be revised in the light of recent discovery. It is now recog-
nized that the contribution of the Greeks to world knowledge
was not entirely original. Greekscolonists, settled in Asia Minor,
traveled widely. Thales and others full of enterprise and love
of adventure, and athirst for wonders in strange lands, came to
Egypt. There they saw the Egyptians at work and marvelled.
There they found the beginnings of mathematics and science
which they developed and brought to greater perfection.
Through the Greeks, the legacy of Egypt was transmitted to
the rest of the world.
R. W. SLOLEY
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
A summary of our present knowledge of ancient Egyptian astronomy is
given by DR. HESBERT CHATLEY in The Observatory, vol. Ixii (1939), p. 100.
A general account of ancient Egyptian mathematics, fully referenced, is to
be found in an article by T. E. PEET in the Bulletin of the John Rylands
Library (Manchester), vol. xv (1931), p. 409.
Details of clepsydrae and shadow clocks are given in articles by R. W.
SLOLEY in Ancient Egypt (1924), p. 43^ and in the Journal of Egyptian
Archaeologyi vol. svii (1931)5 p. 166,