ABSTRACT
In recent years, however, Jedrkiewicz went so far as to argue that the episode must have been invented because a pyramid ‘contains’ always a part of its shadow, which must therefore be estimated; but to do this it is necessary to know the measure of the angle at the base and the half-length of the side of this solid; now to calculate the height it is enough to know these two quantities, so the measurement of the shadow on the ground is neither necessary nor sufficient. If Thales was in Egypt and developed a special curiosity about the size of the pyramids, it makes sense to ask whether the Egyptians had a similar interest in determining their height. There are, in fact, many indications that the mathematical skills of the Greeks at Thales’ time were less developed than those of contemporary Egyptians.
