The Egyptian Mathematical Leather Roll (EMLR), dates to the Middle Kingdom, and was purchased in Egypt in 1858 by Henry Rhind, near the time when the Rhind papyrus was purchased. While the Rhind papyrus dates to 1650 BC, no specific date has been determined for the EMLR. Both the EMLR and the Rhind papyrus have been in the British Museum since 1864, donated by the estate of Henry Rhind. The EMLR was not unrolled until 1927.
It consists of 26 unit fraction series each of which is an expression of a rational number of the form 
or 
into an Egyptian fraction.
Five methods were listed to generally convert any 
or 
to a concise and exact unit fraction series. Four methods
have been confirmed as being additive, with three of them being identities and the
fourth based on a remainder (Boyer and Merzbacher 1991).
For the last 75 years, only the first four methods have been stressed as fairly representing the central theme in the EMLR. However, in 2002, a connection to the Rhind
papyrus 
series rule was published, so there is also a fifth method
using the rule
 |
(1)
|
for 
,
7, 25, as used implicitly in four of the EMLR's 26 series.
As an example of method five consider 
.
 |  |  |
(2)
|
 |  |  |
(3)
|
 |  |  |
(4)
|
 |  |  |
(5)
|
 |  |  |
(6)
|
 |  |  |
(7)
|
as listed in the EMLR.
The Rhind papyrus considered 
, showing that the EMLR was a student test results paper,
teaching the student to use several less optimal values for A when learning to convert
and 
,
as a foundation to learning 
and 
conversion methods.
