The Egyptian number system
The Egyptian number system
I choose to write about the Egyptian Number system because I am familiar with the base system they use. Therefore, it is easy for me to explain. In this essay I will briefly talk about the history of the Egyptian number system, indicate their base, symbols, whether their number system is positional or not and finally explain their number system by giving examples. The Egyptians had a writing system based on hieroglyphs from around 3000 BC. Hieroglyphs was found to be difficult to learn and time consuming to create. Therefore, it was used by only a small part of the Egyptian population, primarily royalty, priests, and civil officials. 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 continued to have broadly similar style. The Egyptians used another number system after the invention of writing on papyrus, which was composed of hieratic numberals. Like the hieroglyphs, the hieratic symbols changed over time but they underwent more changes with six distinct periods. The creation of the version of hieratic numberals was dated from around 1800 BC. 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. The hieratic numerals allowed numbers to be written in a far more compact form yet using the system required many more symbols to be memorised. 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
I choose to write about the Egyptian Number system because I am familiar with the base system they use. Therefore, it is easy for me to explain. In this essay I will briefly talk about the history of the Egyptian number system, indicate their base, symbols, whether their number system is positional or not and finally explain their number system by giving examples. The Egyptians had a writing system based on hieroglyphs from around 3000 BC. Hieroglyphs was found to be difficult to learn and time consuming to create. Therefore, it was used by only a small part of the Egyptian population, primarily royalty, priests, and civil officials. 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 continued to have broadly similar style. The Egyptians used another number system after the invention of writing on papyrus, which was composed of hieratic numberals. Like the hieroglyphs, the hieratic symbols changed over time but they underwent more changes with six distinct periods. The creation of the version of hieratic numberals was dated from around 1800 BC. 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. The hieratic numerals allowed numbers to be written in a far more compact form yet using the system required many more symbols to be memorised. 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