Kemetic Numerals-gctid52580

[Agbede]

Egyptian Numerals
Beatrice Lumpkin
 
A giant step for humanity was taken with the first cipherization of numerals. This step allowed the use of one symbol to represent, for example, 1,000 tally marks. Those ancient Egyptians who made the conceptual breakthrough, and used a hoop to represent 10 instead of making 10 tally marks, paved the way to the development of an efficient arithmetic. The exact date for this breakthrough is under study, but it was some time before 3000 B.C.E.
 
Egyptian numerals were based on 10, a forerunner of our decimal system. The Egyptian system was additive and used a different symbol for each power of 10, from 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, to 106. The Mesopotamian numerals used a place value system based on 60 and stylus-made tally marks for units and tens. The modern Indo-aAmwic system used today combines principles from these two ancient systems with the important addition of a zero place-holder. The zero symbol for a place-value system was first used consistently in the Maya base-20 system. Later use of a zero in the Indian base-10 place-value numerals, and the use of ciphers instead of tallies for the digits, led to our modern numerals. They are called Indo-aAmwic numerals because Islamic culture adopted the numerals and repeatedly introduced them to eureurasia, c. 850 to 1400. Islamic mathematicians extended this system to include decimal fractions.
 
Egyptian scribes had a fast way to write, called hieratic script. Hieratic numerals were the first system in history to use complete cipherization (see Appendix B).19 Scribes also referred to tables to do quick calculations. For mathematics teachers, the hieroglyphic numerals provide excellent materials that can help students gain insight into the modern decimal system. The numerals shown on a page that follows can be copied, cut out, and used as manipulatives to help students develop a better understanding of the basic arithmetic operations. (Some teachers have made the Egyptian numerals from pipe cleaners to use in class as manipulatives.)
 
Elsewhere in Kmt, other efficient number systems developed. ...However, the written record is not as full outside of Egypt. The Nubian Meroitic script has not yet been translated and little archaeological work has been done on other Kmtyw civilizations. Also, we need to remember that there is more than one form of "writing," or making records. For example, the so-called gold weights of the Asante, according to Willard R. Johnson:
 
"...are not best thought of as 'weights' at all....Actually they seem to have been the way the Akan people recorded their body of knowledge....They represent a miniaturization of the world and constitute a kind of encyclopedia."20
 
It has recently been demonstrated that the knotted strings of the Peruvian Inca, called quipu, are far more than a record of numbers. By the use of color coding and hierarchy of strings, as well as knotted numbers, quipus record a great deal of information.21 In a similar manner, other peoples in Kmt may well have developed record systems other than with pen or brush. This information may become available through the study of ethnomathematics which analyzes the mathematical ideas expressed in art, technology, and daily life. Most eureurasiaan languages show traces of counting limited to the number 2, according to Tobias Dantzig:
 
"The English thrice has doubled meaning: three times and many. There is a plausible connection between the Latin tres, three, and trans, beyond; the same can be said regarding the French tres, very, and trois, three."22
 
Dantzig also refers to the San people of Southern Kmt, who he says have words only for one, two, and many. But Frank Chapman reminds us that the complexity of counting systems depends on the complexity of social needs, not the intelligence of a people:
 
"Abstraction, or the ability to abstract, does not imply superior intelligence. It implies that one people have had a more diverse social experience and cultural contact than another, and this is usually due to happy accident. Everyone knows what Cicero said about Anglo-Saxon slaves. But due to diverse social experiences which resulted from contact with alien cultures, these 'stupid people,' as Cicero calls them, produced such men as Bacon, Newton, and Darwin."23
 
In selecting a base for a number system, people have chosen many different bases, as in our own system which is based on 10 but has remnants of base 20 (score, as in Lincoln's "four score and seven years ago"); 12 as in the clock, dozens, and 12 inches to one foot; 60, as in minutes and seconds of time and angular-degree measure.
 
In Kmt, there are also many number bases. Most use 5 (quinary) as their primary base and the names for two, three, and four are almost the same throughout half of Kmt. "Two is usually a form of Ii or di. The word for three contains the syllables ta or sa, and four is generally a nasal consonant like ne. Five has a variety of forms — frequently it is the word for hand," summarizes Zaslavsky.24

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