Ancient Egyptian numbering. Numbers are used to count beings, objects, etc., that is, any amount of everything that surrounds us. In order to write any number, we have to use characters or symbols, which we have to combine according to rules that form what we call a numbering system. In Egypt the ancient numbering system was used.
Summary
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- 1 Ancient Egyptian numbering system
- 1 Hieroglyphs
- 2 Hieratic and demotic notation
- 2 Sources
Egyptian ancient numbering system
One of the oldest numbers is Egyptian. It dates approximately from 7000 years ago, that is to say three millennia before the era of Christ. Over the course of the first three millennia it underwent insignificant changes. Let us relate more closely to this old numbering, and let us focus our attention on the way in which the numerical signs were represented, and how, with their help, the numbers were written.
Hieroglyphics
In Egyptian numbering there were special signs ( hieroglyphs ) for numbers: one, ten, one hundred, one thousand, ten thousand, one hundred thousand, one million. These signs are represented in the following image.
To represent, for example, the integer number 23 1415, it was enough to write in series two hieroglyphs of ten thousand then three hieroglyphs of one thousand, one of one hundred, four of ten and five hieroglyphs for the units.
These symbols, in writing, could not appear more than nine times in each number. In the Egyptian numbering system there was no sign for zero. This single example is enough to learn how to write numbers as represented by the ancient Egyptians. This numbering system is very simple and primitive.
It is a pure decimal system, since the decimal principle according to the class order is used in the representation of the integers. Note that each number sign represents only one number. Thus, for example, the sign for tens denotes only ten units. And not ten tens or ten hundreds, which shows why the Egyptian numbering system was not positions.
Hieratic and demotic notation
These signs were used until the incorporation of Egypt into the Roman Empire. But its use was reserved for monumental inscriptions, in daily use it was replaced by hieratic and demotic writing, simpler forms that allowed faster and more comfortable scribes.
But despite this great development within numerical writing, it was hardly used in the daily life of the Egyptians. This is because most of the administrative texts were written on papyrus or ostraca instead of stone carving, and the vast majority of texts using the Egyptian numeral system used hieratic notation.
For the hieratic notation a different number system was used, in which signs were used for the numbers from 1 to 9, repeating according to the tens, hundreds and thousands. The orientation for their writing was indistinct: they could be written from left to right, backwards or from top to bottom, modifying the orientation of the figures according to the case.
As hieratic writing continued to develop over time, these clusters of signs were simplified to speed up writing, down to demotic writing (it was the only native writing system in general use in Egypt. The demotic name comes from the ancient Greek demotika, “popular”, and clearly refers to its secular functions.
In any case, it is incorrect to speak of these ligatures as a different number system, as it would also be incorrect to speak of a different alphabet comparing hieroglyphic texts with hieratic ligatures, since these “individual signs” were really simple ligatures.
