Morris Kline Quote

The unnaturalness of mathematical symbolism is attested to by history. The algebra of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Hindus, and the Arabs was what is commonly called rhetorical algebra....on the whole they used ordinary rhetoric to describe their mathematical work. Symbolism is a relatively modern invention of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries...

p. 59 - Mathematics and the Physical World (1959)