Alexander Henry Rhind

[3] Suffering from pulmonary disease, he travelled to Egypt in the winters of 1855–1857 with the intention of excavating and collecting for the newly formed National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland.

Rhind acquired it around 1858,[5] and following his death shortly afterwards, it was sold to the British Museum, along with the similar Egyptian Mathematical Leather Roll.

When chemically softened and decoded years afterward, they show the Egyptians had computed the value of π as 3.1605, a margin of error of less than one percent.

He has been described as a "young hero", the only "bright shining light of archaeological method and conscience" in the mid-nineteenth century, who plotted the exact location of artefacts and their relationships, the first to do so.

[7] Rhind directed that a sum from his estate at Sibster, Caithness, be used for this purpose, once the interests of living parties was extinguished; this eventuated in 1874, 11 years after his death.