The ancient Egyptians were possibly the first
civilisation to practice the scientific arts. Indeed, the word chemistry
is derived from the word Alchemy which is the ancient name for Egypt.
Where the Egyptians really excelled was in medicine and
applied mathematics. But although there is a large body of papyrus literature
describing their achievements in medicine, there is no records of how they
reached their mathematical conclusions. Of course they must have had an
advanced understanding of the subject because their exploits in engineering,
astronomy and administration would not have been possible without it.
The Egyptians had a decimal system using seven different
symbols.
1 is shown by a single stroke.
10 is shown by a drawing of a hobble for cattle.
100 is represented by a coil of rope.
1,000 is a drawing of a lotus plant.
10,000 is represented by a finger.
100,000 by a tadpole or frog
1,000,000 is the figure of a god with arms raised above
his head.
(Click the image, above, to download Gifs or if your
browser does not support image maps use the table left)
The
conventions for reading and writing numbers is quite simple; the higher
number is always written in front of the lower number and where there is
more than one row of numbers the reader should start at the top.
Mathematics Problems
This section is a brief test to see if you could survive
in the world of Egytian numerals and mathmatics.
Problems
from Pam B. Newberry -
The Egyptian Maths translator. This is a JavaScript translator,
which uses hieroglyphic numerals to make math calulations. Click
here to go to the Egyptian Maths translator. (You
will need Netscape 4 or IE4 to see this version of JavaScript)
Egyptian mathematics
