Egyptian

Egyptians introduced the earliest fully-developed base 10 numeration system at least as early
as 2700 BCE. Written numbers used a stroke for units, a heel-bone symbol for tens, a coil of
rope for hundreds and a lotus plant for thousands, as well as other hieroglyphic symbols for
higher powers of ten up to a million. However, there was no concept of place value, so larger
numbers were rather unwieldy (although a million required just one character, a million
minus one required fifty-four characters).

MULTIPLICATION

Multiplication was achieved by a process of repeated doubling of the number to be multiplied

on one side and of one on the other. These corresponding blocks of counters could then be
used as a kind of multiplication reference table. The combination of powers of two which add
up to the number to be multiplied by was isolated, and then the corresponding blocks of
counters on the other side yielded the answer. This effectively made use of the concept of
binary numbers, over 3000 years before Leibniz introduced it into the west, and many more
years before the development of the computer was to fully explore its potential.
Hieroglyphic Fractions

The Rhind papyrus discovered by Henry Rhind, in the 19th century, dates from 1650 BCE
preferred to reduce all fractions to unit fractions, such as 1/4, 1/2 and 1/8, rather than 2/5 or
7/16. All of these complex fractions were described as sums of unit fractions so, for example,
3/4 was written as 1/2+1/4, and 4/5 as 1/2+1/4+1/20. This seems a little unwieldy but is actually
straightforward to use once you are used to it.
The hieroglyph for ‘R’ was used as the word ‘part’. For example:

Eye of Horus

In one of the ancient stories the god Seth attacked his brother the god Horus and gouged out
his eye and then tore it to pieces. Fortunately for Horus the god Thoth was able to put the
pieces back together and heal his eye. In honour of this story the ancient Egyptians also used
the pieces of Horus’s eye to describe fractions.

 The right side of the eye = 1/2

 The pupil = 1/4
 The eyebrow = 1/8
 The left side of the eye = 1/16
 The curved tail = 1/32
 The teardrop = 1/6
 Ancient geometry

Geometry was essential for Egyptians as they constructed a number of structures including the
pyramids. The Great Pyramid of Khufu from the Fourth Dynasty was a mathematical wonder
because it was laid out with geometric precision.

The scribes recorded problems computing the areas of triangles, circles, and rectangles. The
angle between the base and one of the faces is 51° 50′ 35″. The secant of this angle is 1.61806
which is remarkably close to the golden ratio 1.618034.