ISAW Announces Publication of "Mathematics, Metrology, and Model Contracts" by Roger Bagnall and Alexander Jones

The Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and the NYU Press will publish the latest volume in the ISAW Monographs series on January 15, 2020: Mathematics, Metrology, and Model Contracts: A Codex From Late Antique Business Education by Roger S. Bagnall (Emeritus Professor of Ancient History and Leon Levy Director Emeritus, ISAW) and Alexander Jones (Leon Levy Director and Professor of the History of the Exact Sciences in Antiquity, ISAW).

Mathematics, Metrology, and Model Contracts is a comprehensive edition and commentary of a late antique codex that mathematical problems, metrological tables, and model contracts. Given the nature of the contents, the format, and quality of the Greek, the codex most likely belonged to a student in a school devoted to training business agents and similar professionals. In addition to a full scholarly edition of the text, with complete discussions of the provenance, codicology, and philology of the surviving manuscript, Bagnall and Jones also provide extensive notes and illustrations for the mathematical problems and model contracts, as well as historical commentary on what this text reveals about late antique numeracy, literacy, education, and vocational training in what we would now see as business, law, and administration.

The codex was the focus of an ISAW graduate research seminar in 2010, and the edition reflects contributions by several students and Visiting Research Scholars who took part in the seminar.

Mathematics, Metrology, and Model Contracts is the ninth volume to be published in the ISAW Monographs series, a joint publication project with the NYU Press. As with ISAW Papers, ISAW's born-digital journal, five volumes of ISAW Monographs are now also available free online via the newly redesigned ISAW Publications page. ISAW is committed to publishing all volumes of ISAW Monographs free and online for the interested public and scholarship community in a timely fashion.

ISAW will mark the occasion of the publication of Mathematics, Metrology, and Model Contracts by exhibiting its publications, including ISAW Monographs, for the first time at the Joint Annual Meeting of the Society for Classical Studies and Archaeological Institute of America, January 2-5, 2020 in Washington, D.C.

Information about previous volumes, as well as how to order then in both print and online versions, is available via the ISAW Publications page and the NYU Press website. For information or questions about ISAW Monographs and ISAW's publishing projects, please email David M. Ratzan.