COLOR: Egyptian Numerals

Egyptian Numerals

As early as 3500 BC, the Egyptians had extended their use of numbers to include hundreds of thousands and millions. One of the earliest examples of Egyptian writing were the hieroglyphs on Narmer or Menes, the first king of upper and lower Egypt (3000 BC). The numerals on the hieroglyphs cited the existance of thousands of heads of cattle and thousands of prisoners. This numerals used indicates that numerals and hieroglyphs already had a long history.

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.

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.

= 12,425 birds

Try out some Egyptian math problems.

The hieroglyphic and the hieratic numeral systems used by the Egyptians did not use a positional value and did not need a zero "placeholder." Nevertheless, ancient Egyptians had a symbol for zero, which they used in leveling lines to guide the construction of pyramids and other large structures, for zero remainders in bookkeeping, and so on. In construction, zero was as a reference for a system of directed or signed numbers, for example, five cubits below zero (see The Discovery of Zero).

Egyptian "Pi"

The Egyptian value of "pi" was 3.16, which is much closer to the modern 3.14 than the biblical value of 3.0. The Egyptian mathematicians probably used measurement, experimentation and a theoretical analysis of "squaring a circle" to obtain such an accurate value of "pi."

History of Mathematics in Africa

African Youth Village

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