[kdamica]

Not sure about this particular text, but much of the earliest writing we have is record-keeping for taxes. You could definitely imagine this kind of math being important for tax collectors to learn, since they would typically travel around to collect taxes at some interval, and would have to calculate the amounts on the fly.

[burkaman]

Yeah these could be very literal problems. The first seems useful for assessing the value of a taxable asset, and the second for paying back a loan or a penalty over time.