AllatRa by Anastasia Novykh 2 www.allatra.org

AllatRa by Anastasia Novykh
Alexandria (Mouseion at Alexandria) had already been founded by that time. It was a
higher educational institution of international importance, and unique ancient books
(scrolls) from different countries were kept there. It is known that Archimedes worked in
it afterwards. I did a research in historical sources where else such knowledge about
polyhedra and spatial figures was mentioned in those days and earlier. As you
recommended, I looked into the written records of the Hittites (the Indo-European
people who lived in the central part of Asia Minor in the 2nd millennium BCE). The
Hittites received the mathematical knowledge from the Babylonians. In other words,
roughly speaking, fifteen centuries before ancient Greek mathematicians Pythagoras,
Euclid and Archimedes, people already knew of such information as, for example,
raising a number to a power, tables of square and cube roots, formulae for calculating
the area of the triangle, trapezium, circle, volume of the cube, parallelepiped, cone, an
ordinary and truncated pyramid as well as other dimensional figures. Indeed, people
possessed all this knowledge since ancient times. Judging by monumental building, it
was also used by the ancient Egyptians, the Sumerians, the Indians, inhabitants of
Mesoamerica and other ancient peoples.
I also read again the information about the star polyhedra, in particular, the Kepler–
Poinsot polyhedra, about the stellated octahedron, which was rediscovered for the
modern humanity by the famous scientist Leonardo da Vinci. It is believed that the
forms were prompted to people by nature itself. But you are right, what kind of forms
are they? These are really symbols and signs! Take the example of the triangle, pyramid,
cube, star and so on. Now I understand better not only the principle of influence through
working signs, but also why and how particular symbols were used for a more accurate
transmission of a specific meditative technique.
Figure 61. The stellated octahedron of Leonardo da Vinci.
3
www.allatra.org