The roles of Mesopotamian bronze age mathematics tool for state formation and administration: carrier of teachers' professional intellectual autonomy

The article describes the social and cultural roles of Mesopotamian mathematics and the interplay of these roles with such patterns of mathematical thought as can be traced through the sources; it covers the period from the first formation of a genuine state, shortly after the mid-fourth millennium BCE, until the end of the Old Babylonian' epoch, c. 1600 BCE.

The picture presented is a historical reconstruction; little of what it asserts can be found directly in a single source. Full documentation would ask for a bibliography longer than the article. This being both impossible and without purpose, some publications of importance are listed in concluding "Bibliographic Remarks"; in these, further bibliography can be found.