MATHEMATICS IN ANCIENT EGYPT the sophistication of Egyptian mathematics.

Group 2: Taoc, Perez, Janolino, Arado
I. INTRODUCTION
The early Egyptians settled along the fertile Nile
valley as early as about 6000 BCE, and they
began to record the patterns of lunar phases and
the seasons, both for agricultural and religious
reasons.
The Pharaoh’s surveyors used measurements
based on body parts (a palm was the width of the
hand, a cubit the measurement from elbow to
fingertips) to measure land and buildings very
early in Egyptian history, and a decimal numeric
system was developed based on our ten fingers.
The oldest mathematical text from ancient Egypt
discovered so far, though, is the Moscow Papyrus,
which dates from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom
around 2000 - 1800 BCE.
Setting aside claims that the pyramids are first
known structures to observe the golden ratio of 1 :
1.618 (which may have occurred for purely
aesthetic, and not mathematical, reasons), there is
certainly evidence that they knew the formula for
the volume of a pyramid - 1⁄3 times the height
times the length times the width - as well as of a
truncated or clipped pyramid.
ROSETTA STONE
1. The Rosetta Stone is a stone with writing on it
in two languages (Egyptian and Greek), using
three scripts (hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek).
2. The Rosetta Stone is a text written by a group
of priests in Egypt to honour the Egyptian
pharaoh. It lists all of the things that the pharaoh
has done that are good for the priests and the
people of Egypt.

It is thought that the Egyptians introduced the 3. The Rosetta Stone was written in all three
earliest fully-developed base 10 numeration scripts so that the priests, government officials
system at least as early as 2700 BCE (and and rulers of Egypt could read what it said.
probably much early).

The Rhind Papyrus, dating from around 1650

BCE, is a kind of instruction manual in arithmetic
and geometry, and it gives us explicit
demonstrations of how multiplication and division
was carried out at that time.

Practical problems of trade and the market led to

the development of a notation for fractions. The
papyri which have come down to us demonstrate
the use of unit fractions based on the symbol of
the Eye of Horus, where each part of the eye
represented a different fraction.

The pyramids themselves are another indication of

 FOR SUBTRACTION:
II. EARLY NUMBER SYSTEMS

THE HIEROGLYPHICS SYSTEM OF WRITING *MULTIPLICATION AND DIVISION

- The Egyptian arithmetic was essentially
“additive,” meaning that its tendency was to
reduce multiplication and division to repeated
additions. Multiplication of two numbers was
accomplished by successively doubling one of the
numbers and then adding the appropriate
duplications to form the product.
THE HIERATIC SYSTEM OF WRITING

III. ARITHMETIC AND COMPUTATION

* ADDITION AND SUBTRACTION

- Addition and subtraction in ancient Egyptian
symbols are similar to what they are in our
numerical system.

FOR ADDITION:
FOR MULTIPLICATION:

FOR DIVISION:
 V. EGYPTIAN GEOMETRY

IV. FRACTIONS

Unit Fractions - is a fraction with 1 in the

numerator.
- sum of distinct unit fractions.
- ex. 1/2 , 1/3. 1/4
VI. EGYPTIAN ALGEBRA

- Fractions -Pefsu problem

- AHA Problems

- Arithmetic and Geometric Progression

VII. SOCIETAL IMPORTANCE

a. Arithmetic, Algebra and Geometry are still

used.

B. The Ancient Egyptians figured out how to do

multiplication without memorizing times tables,
and how to do long division without that half box
that was the bane of your early childhood.

C. The Usage of trial and error technique .

D. The ancient Egyptians were very good

astronomers of their time. Looking at the
cloudless clear blue sky, they could predict about
the solar and lunar eclipse, flood in the river Nile,
time of sowing seeds etc. They could also know
about the movement of Planets and Stars.

E. They were very efficient in addition,

subtraction, multiplication and division. They had
acquired knowledge in triangle, quadrangle,
square, rectangle etc. for measuring the land.

F. Same process of getting the answer but

different illustrations.

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