1650 b.c. This is the approximate date of the Rhind (or Ahmes) papyrus, a mathematical text partaking of the nature of a practical handbook and containing 85 problems copied in hieratic writing by the scribe Ahmes from an earlier work.The papyrus was purchased in Egypt by the English Egyptologist A Henry Rhind and then later scquired by the British Museum. This and the Moscow papyrus are our chief sources of information concerning ancient Egyptian mathematics. The Rhind papyrus was published in 1927