EGYPTIAN MATH SUMMARY

How Math Began in Egypt

The Nile floods during the rainy season providing fertile land. Life on Egypt depended highly on
the fluctuations of the Nile. Knowing when the rainy season was about to arrive was vital so this
led to careful records and calculations and the study of astronomy and developed enough
information to create a calendar. Surveyors and scribes were continually re-measuring the land
and boundaries.
Herodotus the Greek (~500 BC), wrote: Pharaoh Ramses II divided the land into lots among all
Egyptians and gave everyone a square piece of equal sizes, from which he extracted an annual
tax. [If] any man's holding was damaged by the flooding of the river the Pharoah would send
inspectors [and surveyors] to measure the extent of the loss, in order that he pay in future a fair
proportion of the tax at which his property had been assessed. Perhaps this was the way in
which geometry was invented, and passed afterwards to Greece.
The large area covered by the Egyptian nation required complex administration, development of
a broad irrigation system to support the entire civilization, a system of efficient and extensive tax
and census had to be maintained and a large army had to be imposed. As the society became
more complex, computations are beginning to be required and as population grew, barter
becomes a daily demand.
A need for counting became desperate and a system of writing and numerals were needed to
record transactions
All of this led to the development of mathematics.
Herodotus, Proclus in his Commentary on Euclid, as well as Aristotle, Democritus and all other
ancient writers all credited their neighbors in the Nile Valley with the invention of geometry and
with excellence in its practice. Plato relates that the Egyptians taught arithmetic to their children
with lessons based on enjoyment and games.
Mathematical documents that remained from Ancient Egypt contains several instances of what
looks like recreational mathematics so called Aha problem or similarly “think- of- a- number”
type problems presented with no practical purpose except for the pleasure of puzzling.
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.
Ancient Egyptian texts could be written in either hieroglyphs or in hieratic. In either
representation the number system was always given in base 10.
Evidence of the use of the base 10 number system can be found on the Narmer Macehead
which depicts offerings of 400,000 oxen, 1,422,000 goats and 120,000 prisoners.
Egyptians introduced the earliest fully-developed base 10 numeration system at least as early
as 2700 BCE. They already had numerals from one unit up to a million but these were limited.
The sign for 1,000,000 was a picture of a man striking his hands above his head, as if to
express amazement that such a number should exist.
However, there was no concept of place value, so larger numbers were rather hard to write
(although a million required just one character, a million minus one required fifty-four
characters).
They were short on the decimal system; they had no zero, and never reached the idea of
expressing all numbers with ten digits: e.g., they used twenty-seven signs to write 999-187
They had fractions, but always with the numerator 1.
Early hieroglyphic numerals can be found on temples, stone monuments and vases. They give
little knowledge about any mathematical calculations which might have been done with the
number systems.
Hieroglyphs were being carved in stone there was no need to develop symbols which could be
written more quickly.
However, when the Egyptians began to use flattened sheets of the dried papyrus reed as
"paper" and the tip of a reed as a "pen" there developed a rapid means of writing. This
prompted the development of hieratic writing and numerals.
Although famous for their Hieroglyphs, they rarely wrote in hieroglyphs
Hieroglyphic writing - a script consisting of many hundreds of intricate image sbut time-
consuming to create. It was therefore reserved for the most important texts; the writings
decorating tomb and temple walls, and texts recording royal achievements.
There must have been a large number of papyri, many dealing with mathematics in one form or
another, but sadly since the material is rather fragile almost all have perished. It is remarkable
that any have survived at all, and that they have is a consequence of the dry climatic conditions
in Egypt. Two major mathematical documents survive.
Already by Old Kingdom times, Egyptian number researchers had developed working systems
of multiplication and division that were so ingenious, so simple, and so efficient that the Greeks
and many others continued to use them for many centuries after the last pharaoh was buried.
In terms of using mathematics every day, the Egyptians were masters and devised some
sophisticated techniques. Their mathematicians were so skilled that great Greek
mathematicians such as Thales and Pythagoras learned techniques in Egypt. However they had
a couple of major flaws.
Egyptian Geometry is highly concerned on determining areas. The Egyptians developed
formulas for the areas and volumes of many shaped, but used trial and error rather than proofs
so they were not entirely correct in their formulas.
For example, the area of an isosceles triangle, of which the sides measure 10 and the base is 4
was erroneously given as 20 or half the product of the base and one side.
But the Egyptians did not see any need to discover axioms of find relationships between sets of
numbers, they used brute force and trial and error methods to solve their problems.
1st flaw. They failed to construct a rigorously logical system of geometry. Many of their rules had
probably not been proved at all, but were known to be true merely from observation or as
matters of fact.
The Egyptians did not see any need to discover axioms of find relationships between sets of
numbers, they used brute force and trial and error methods to solve their problems. The
mathematical skills of the Egyptians focused on solving real world problems, rather than
discovering principles.
The Egyptians never explored the theoretical side of mathematics in the same way as the
Greek. Through trial and error they developed enough mathematics to help them function as a
society.
The second great defect was their inability to bring the numerous special cases under a more
general view, and thereby to arrive at broader and more fundamental theorems.
Some of the simplest geometrical truths were divided into numberless special cases of which
each was supposed to require separate treatment. Some particulars about Egyptian geometry
can be mentioned more advantageously in connection with the early Greek mathematicians who
came to the Egyptian priests for instruction. An insight into Egyptian methods of numeration was
obtained through the ingenious deciphering of the hieroglyphics by Champollion, Young, and
their successors. The symbols.
The principal defect of Egyptian arithmetic was the lack of a simple, comprehensive symbolism,
a defect which not even the Greeks were able to remove. In fact, during the next two thousand
years, they should have made no progress whatsoever in it.
Earliest Demonstration and Application of Mathematics in Ancient Egypt
The Egyptians had a calendar as early as 4800 BC, but in 4200 BC their mathematics and
astronomy produced a 365
day calendar (12 months of 30 days plus 5 days at the end of the year.)
The beginning of the year was chosen as the heliacal rising of Sirius, the brightest star in the
sky. The heliacal rising is the first appearance of the star after the period when it is too close to
the sun to be seen.
For Sirius this occurs in July and this was taken to be the start of the year. The Nile flooded
shortly after this so it was a natural beginning for the year. The heliacal rising of Sirius would tell
people to prepare for the floods.
Later a more accurate value of 3651/4days was worked out for the length of the year but the civil
calendar was never changed to take this into account.
Eventually the civil year was divided into 12 months, with a 5 day extra period at the end of the
year. The Egyptian calendar was revised due to the arrival of Julius Caesar in Egypt.
Each season was divided into four months of 30 days. These twelve months were initially
numbered within each season but came to also be known by the names of their principal
festivals.
Each month was divided into three 10-day periods known as decans or decades. The last two
days of each decan were usually treated as a kind of weekend, with royal artisans and others
free from work.
The Egyptians were very interested in the stars and constellations and they gave much care for
that science. From the Middle Kingdom, constellations were often depicted on coffins as star
clocks, showing the length of time stars were visible or invisible.
The calendar was necessary in farming and flood planning.

The Egyptian
Mace Head
Contains a record of the winnings of war that depicts the use of numbers in the millions.
The Scorpion macehead is a decorated ancient Egyptian mace head found by British
archeologists James E. Quibelland Frederick W. Green in what they called the  temple of Horus
(1897-1898)
It is made of limestone, is pear-shaped, and is attributed to the Pharaoh Scorpion due to
the glyph of a scorpion engraved close to the image of a king wearing the White Crown of Upper
Egypt.
On this mace head we see a king wearing the RedCrown sitting under a canopy on a dais,
covered in a long cloth. He is holding the flail and above the canopy a vulture hovers with
spread wings, possibly Nekhbet, the local goddess. We also see fan-bearers, sandal-bearers, a
collection of offerings, a shrine and a heron on its roof.
The Narmer macehead is another ancient Egyptian decorative stone. Found by James
Quibell in 1898 in the temple area of the ancient Egyptian city of Nekhen. The macehead is now
kept at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
2560 B.C.
Consisting of an estimated 2.3 million blocks, the Great Pyramid at Giza stands as a testament
of ancient Egyptian math, including the use of large scale numbers, the Golden Ratio,
Pythagorean Theorem, and Pi.
Though there is debate about the extent of ancient Egyptian knowledge of these subjects, the
Pyramids are still a great achievement in math and is remarkable feat of engineering. This
indicates the highest level of achievement amongst all of the ancient civilization as it is the last
on still standing up to this day.
Named after the Scottish Egyptologist, Henry Rhind, who purchased it in Luxor in 1858.
The papyrus, a scroll about 6 meters long and 1/3 of a meter wide, was written around 1650 BC
by the scribe Ahmes who states that he is copying a document which is 200 years older.
Therefore, the original papyrus on which the Rhind papyrus is based therefore dates from about
1850 BC.
It is entitled “Directions for obtaining the Knowledge of all Dark Things."
To overcome the deficiencies of their system of numerals the Egyptians devised cunning ways
round the fact that their numbers were poorly suited for multiplication as is shown in the Rhind
papyrus.
We see from it that the Egyptians cared little for theoretical results. Theorems are not found in it
at all. It contains hardly any general rules of procedure, but mere statements of results intended
possibly to be explained by a teacher to his pupils.

When the Egyptians encountered a remainder, they expressed it as the sum of up to four
different unit fractions in decreasing order that they looked up in tables just as we used to look
up logarithms before we switched to electronic calculators.
The Rhind Papyrus includes such a table for all odd divisors of two from 3 to 101, with none of
the fractions smaller than 1/1000.
The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus also shows samples of linear equations, volume, unit
fractions, algebra, pyramid dimension.
“However more sophisticated and advanced the mathematics of the Greeks, Romans, Arabs,
and Byzantines may have been, not one of these nations over this long period of time had been
able to devise more efficient technique for dealing with the simple common fraction”
The oldest mathematical text from ancient Egypt discovered so far which dates from the
Egyptian Middle Kingdom around 2000 - 1800 BCE.
An 18 foot long papyrus containing 25 math problems with solutions including: worker output,
ship building, pyramid dimensions, and the unknown Aha problems.
The scribe who wrote this document has not recorded his name. It is often called the
Golenischev papyrus after the man who purchased it.
Moscow Papyrus contained further problems showing how to calculate the volume of a
truncated pyramid and work out the surface area of half a sphere. This showed that the
Egyptians used a value of 256/81 for Pi which, at a figure of 3.16. Certainly, it was accurate
enough for most practical uses.
The Moscow Mathematical Papyrus and Rhind Mathematical Papyrus are so-called
mathematical problem texts. They consist of a collection of problems with solutions. These texts
may have been written by a teacher or a student engaged in solving typical mathematics
problems.
The Rhind papyrus contains eighty-seven problems while the Moscow papyrus contains twenty-
five.