Egyptian Numerals
Egyptian Numbers :
The Egyptians had a writing system based on hieroglyphs from around 3000 BC. Hieroglyphs are
represented in pictures. The Egyptians had a bases 10 system of hieroglyphs for numerals.
They have separate symbols for one unit, one ten, one hundred, one thousand, one ten thousand, one
hundred thousand, and one million.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
100
1000
10000
100000
1000000
1/2
1/3
2/3
3/4
+
-
Numeric Description:
Symbols Descripton
Symbol from 1 - 9 Single Strokes
Symbol for 10 Cattle Hobble or Yoke
Symbol for 100 Coil of Rope
Symbol for 1000 Water Lily(also called Lotus Flower)
Symbol for 10000 Finger
Symbol for 100000 Tadpole or Frog
Symbol for 1000000 Egyptian Man with both hands raised
Symbol for indicating Fraction Mouth(Part)
Symbol for Plus and Minus Feet pointed into the direction
Example:
4568 is represented as the below one:
In the Arabic number system, we have ten digits (from 0-9) and we can make
as big a number as we want with these. We use all ten digits to count to nine,
then we combine them to make bigger numbers. So we never run out of
numbers, as long as there is room to write them down. The ancient Egyptians
didn't think this. They had a simple line to mean one, like us, but instead of a
new symbol for two, they used two lines. There were three lines for three, four
lines for four, and so on, up to nine lines for nine. By now, there were rather a
lot of lines! So they introduced a new symbol for ten. Then they carried on
adding lines for units and ten symbols for ten, until they got to a hundred,
which needed a new symbol. This sort of system is called unary. It is common
among ancient civilisations. One advantage of unary systems is that it doesn't
matter what order you write the number. You can jumble them up and you can
still work out what they mean. But in our system, 123 means something
different to 321. The Egyptians used ten as a base for their number systems,
just like us. We have ten fingers on our hands, so base 10 is common.
1
The symbol for one may come from a finger. Everyone
starts off counting on their fingers!
10
The symbols get more complicated as the numbers get
bigger. The symbol for ten is a piece of rope.
100 The symbol for a hundred is a coil of rope.
1,000
The symbol for a thousand is the lotus or water lily. It
shows the leaf, stem and rhizome or root. It seems odd
not to show the flower, but you can eat the root.
10,000
The symbol for ten thousand is a single, large finger.
Perhaps it is a finger ten thousand times as big as the
symbol for one!
100,000
The symbol for a hundred thousand is a tadpole. It
seems to be nearly turning into a frog. If you want to
know why this is the symbol for such a large number,
imagine a pool full of frog spawn all turning into tiny
frogs.
1,000,000
The symbol for a million is a god called Heh. It also
means just a very large number, like 'squillion'. I think it
looks like a fisherman describing how big was the fish
that got away - "It was enormous!"
The Egyptians even had this symbol for infinity, which is bigger than any
number that's ever been written. It is a circle, so you go round forever without
finding an end. In the picture of Ra on the right, you can see the falcon holding
this symbol in each talon.
The Egyptians would have needed a good number system to build the
pyramids. They would have needed to work out how much stone they needed,
and when, otherwise the workmen making the pyramid would have been
sitting round most of the time doing nothing, waiting for new stone. All these
workmen needed to be fed, so you would need to calculate how much food,
and store it, and make sure it didn't run out. They needed to calculate with
very big numbers! Adding was quite easy with these numbers, but they even
managed to multiply with them. The Egyptians also had symbols forfractions.
But they didn't have a symbol for zero.
Egyptian numerals
Egyptian index History Topics Index
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The Egyptians had a writing system based on hieroglyphs from around 3000 BC.
Hieroglyphs are little pictures representing words. It is easy to see how they would
denote the word "bird" by a little picture of a bird but clearly without further
development this system of writing cannot represent many words. The way round this
problem adopted by the ancient Egyptians was to use the spoken sounds of words. For
example, to illustrate the idea with an English sentence, we can see how "I hear a
barking dog" might be represented by:
"an eye", "an ear", "bark of tree" + "head with crown", "a dog".
Of course the same symbols might mean something different in a different context, so
"an eye" might mean "see" while "an ear" might signify "sound".
The Egyptians had a bases 10 system of hieroglyphs for numerals. By this we mean
that they has separate symbols for one unit, one ten, one hundred, one thousand, one
ten thousand, one hundred thousand, and
one million.
Here are the numeral hieroglyphs.
To make up the number 276, for example, fifteen symbols were required: two
"hundred" symbols, seven "ten" symbols, and six "unit" symbols. The numbers
appeared thus:
276 in hieroglyphs.
Here is another example:
4622 in hieroglyphs.
Note that the examples of 276 and 4622 in hieroglyphs are seen on a stone carving
from Karnak, dating from around 1500 BC, and now displayed in the Louvre in Paris.
As can easily be seen, adding numeral hieroglyphs is easy. One just adds the
individual symbols, but replacing ten copies of a symbol by a single symbol of the
next higher value. Fractions to the ancient Egyptians were limited to unit fractions
(with the exception of the frequently used
2
/
3
and less frequently used
3
/
4
). A unit
fraction is of the form 1/n where n is an integer and these were represented in numeral
hieroglyphs by placing the symbol representing a "mouth", which meant "part", above
the number. Here are some examples:
Notice that when the number contained too many symbols for the "part" sign to be
placed over the whole number, as in
1
/
249
, then the "part" symbol was just placed over
the "first part" of the number. [It was the first part for here the number is read from
right to left.]
We should point out that the hieroglyphs did not remain the same throughout the two
thousand or so years of the ancient Egyptian civilisation. This civilisation is often
broken down into three distinct periods:
Old Kingdom - around 2700 BC to 2200 BC
Middle Kingdom - around 2100 BC to 1700 BC
New Kingdom - around 1600 BC to 1000 BC
Numeral hieroglyphs were somewhat different in these different periods, yet retained
a broadly similar style.
Another number system, which the Egyptians used after the invention of writing on
papyrus, was composed of hieratic numerals. These numerals allowed numbers to be
written in a far more compact form yet using the system required many more symbols
to be memorised. There were separate symbols for
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,
10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90,
100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900,
1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000, 6000, 7000, 8000, 9000
Here are versions of the hieratic
numerals
With this system numbers could be formed of a few symbols. The number 9999 had
just 4 hieratic symbols instead of 36 hieroglyphs. One major difference between the
hieratic numerals and our own number system was the hieratic numerals did not form
a positional system so the particular numerals could be written in
any order.
Here is one way the Egyptians wrote 2765 in hieratic numerals
Here is a second way of writing 2765 in hieratic numerals with
the order reversed
Like the hieroglyphs, the hieratic symbols changed over time but they underwent
more changes with six distinct periods. Initially the symbols that were used were quite
close to the corresponding hieroglyph but their form diverged over time. The versions
we give of the hieratic numerals date from around 1800 BC. The two systems ran in
parallel for around 2000 years with the hieratic symbols being used in writing on
papyrus, as for example in the Rhind papyrus and the Moscow papyrus, while the
hieroglyphs continued to be used when carved on stone.
References (3 books/articles)
