Moscow Mathematical Papyrus

The Moscow Mathematical Papyrus (MMP) is an old, old piece of paper that was found in a place called Egypt, which is a country far away from where we live. It is special because it has lots of numbers and math problems written on it. Imagine a big piece of paper with lots of lines, and someone has drawn pictures of fingers and toes, and also some shapes such as triangles and rectangles.

But the people who wrote on the MMP were very smart, so they didn't just draw pictures to show numbers. They actually had their own way of writing numbers, which we call ancient Egyptian numerals. For example, instead of writing the number 7 like we do with the digit 7, they would draw seven little lines together.

The paper also has some tricky math problems that the ancient Egyptians tried to solve using their special way of writing numbers. One problem might ask how many loaves of bread can be made from some grains of wheat, or how many bricks are needed to build a house of a particular size.

So, even though the MMP looks like just an old piece of paper with some drawings on it, it is really a special and important document that helps us learn about how people did math a very, very long time ago!