Chapter Title: FRACTIONS

Book Title: Count Like an Egyptian

Book Subtitle: A Hands-on Introduction to Ancient Mathematics
Book Author(s): DAVID REIMER
Published by: Princeton University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vjvdr.7

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Princeton University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access
to Count Like an Egyptian

This content downloaded from

195.43.22.135 on Fri, 16 Oct 2020 16:35:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 2
Fractions

The Sheltering Arms of the Desert

Mediterranean
Egyptian “Fractions” and Decimals

Egyptian society was concurrent with a number of great

Mesopotamian empires; however, those empires rarely Marsh
lasted more than a couple of generations, being brought
down by barbarians or a warlord with a desire for an
empire of his own. Although it was a great civilization,
Mesopotamia suffered from constant turmoil and abrupt
change. Although equally as large, Egypt was more of a

Des
nation than an empire. For almost three thousand years,
Egypt remained relatively stable. There were a few “in-

er
termediate” periods consisting of either internal strife or

t
foreign influence, but these were small compared to the Des
thousands of years of internal peace. er
Egypt owed much of its stability to its unique geog-
t
raphy. The land simply kept the violent outsiders away.
In order to understand ancient Egypt, however, we must
realize that modern borders meant little in the ancient First Cataract
world. Egypt was split into two parts: the Nile valley and
the northern delta. The valley is hundreds of miles long
Nubia
but never more than about ten miles wide. A map of this
part of Egypt would look like a long string winding its
way through the desert. The western desert comprised the Ancient Egypt.
harsh sands of the Sahara Desert. The eastern desert was
a stony, mountainous landscape. Neither side could sup- into small, vulnerable groups. The southern border of
port enough people to seriously threaten the Egyptians Egypt was only a few miles wide because it consisted only
who lived on the banks of the Nile, and both sides pre- of the width of the Nile and its banks. It was easy to con-
sented a sweltering, waterless barrier to outside invaders. centrate troops at this one point. Egyptians had little fear
The Egyptians were also relatively protected in the of an armada sailing downriver from the south. The Nile
south. Most nations have trouble defending borders that has a series of rapids, called cataracts, along its southern
span up to a thousand miles long. In order to protect the portion. Large boats could not navigate these waters and
entire country, they would need to disperse their armies would have to be portaged over land to get around them.

This content downloaded from

195.43.22.135 on Fri, 16 Oct 2020 16:35:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
14   Chapter 2

The Egyptians wisely built forts at these points to harass with the outside world and had little desire to change that
any fleet that attempted this tactic. situation. As a result, Egypt developed in its own way and
The northern delta was also fairly safe. This triangular did things radically differently from the rest of the world.
region was also protected on the east and west by desert. This is not to say that there was no foreign influence on
The delta did have some vulnerability due to its long bor- the Egyptians, but they had the ability to reject or accept
der with the Mediterranean, but this was not as bad as ideas as they saw fit, and they were predisposed to reject
it might seem. During most of Egypt’s history, sea travel them. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the way they
was a risky business. Ship-building technology had not dealt with fractional values.
progressed far enough at this time. Any king would be The Mesopotamians had a system remarkably close to
taking a great risk by placing the army charged with pro- our decimal system except that they used base sixty. When
tecting his kingdom in a series of not-so-seaworthy ships. we want to express a half, we write 0.5 in decimal form
One storm could wipe out the bulk of his armed forces. because 5 is half of 10. When the Mesopotamians wanted
Even if an invading force managed to sail a fleet to the to write one-half, they wrote something like 0.30, since 30
delta, it would immediately encounter problems. Ships is half of 60. Actually, they didn’t have zeros or a “point”
that can survive in the sea are not very good on rivers and symbol, so they would just write a symbol that repre-
would be at a serious disadvantage against Egypt’s river sented 30. In any case, this is why today half an hour is 30
fleet. If the force attempted to disembark and proceed on minutes. We’re still writing the “decimal” value of time in
foot, they would run into other problems. The delta con- ancient Mesopotamian. We essentially use the Mesopota-
sists of many small islands surrounded by the branches of mian system today in part because they were not isolated
the Nile. This area is swampy and not conducive to mov- from the rest of the world of which we are a part.
ing heavy military equipment. If an invading army con- The Egyptian method seems decidedly strange to the
quered one of the islands, they would have to load all of modern mind. They only used parts, like a fourth or a
their equipment back in their boats and sail to another. tenth. The hieroglyphic representation of a fourth was
Holding an island would force them to leave men behind, simply the number four under the symbol of a mouth.
splitting their troops. In any case, the time such opera- The mouth symbol makes an r sound in the Egyptian
tions took would enable the Egyptians to mount a large- language. It’s possible that they added er to the end of a
scale response. Clearly, Egypt was safe until seafaring and number, just as we add th to the end of a number like ten
military technology advanced to the point of overcoming to form a part, like a tenth.
these obstacles.
According to one of the Egyptian theologies, Ptah
formed the world out of chaos, which still surrounded
it. Egypt was the center of this world, and as you moved
away from Egypt, the closer you came to this disorder.
The violent and barbaric ways of the outsiders probably
seemed natural to the Egyptians’ world view because the
foreigners bordered the primal chaos. Egyptians had little One-fourth written in hieroglyphs.
respect for and wanted little to do with non-Egyptians. In
many ways, this view was justified despite its seemingly So a fifth could be written OAAAAA and a thirteenth as OSAAA.
racist overtones. Imagine how a pharaoh whose position We will use the modern shorthand of placing a bar over
was based on a thousand-year-old tradition would view the number, so f will be used to represent an Egyptian
a Mesopotamian king who recently secured his position fourth. Today these numbers are called unit fractions. A
through violence and plunder. Egypt had little contact fourth is the fraction ¼. The word “unit” refers to the 1

This content downloaded from

195.43.22.135 on Fri, 16 Oct 2020 16:35:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 f r ac ti ons   15

in the numerator of the fraction. This is a misnomer be- Yet only hearing 28 million, you have a very good ap-
cause Egyptian fractions are not fractions in the modern proximation of what you’ve won. Technically, the number
sense. There is no 1 in the numerator because there is no is the sum
numerator. 20,000,000
When modern mathematicians are confronted with
Egyptian fractions, they often shake their heads in dis- 8,000,000
belief. Remember that Egyptian notation could express 700,000
fractions only where we would put a 1 in the numera-
30,000
tor. There simply was no way to write 2⁄5. When Egyptians
wanted to express this value, they had to write d ag. This is 2,000
2
⁄5, since 1⁄3 + 1⁄15 is 2⁄5. Who would possibly want to express
500
non-integer values as the sum of fractions? The answer is
simple. We would, and we do it every day. 90
Every math student eventually learns the approxima- + 3
tion 3.14 for π. What does the representation 3.14 mean?
If you’re sufficiently familiar with the base system, you The sum of the last six terms is dwarfed by the first two
should recognize that this is the sum of three parts: a unit, numbers, so we don’t really need to add all the terms to
a tenths, and a hundredths part. So when we write 3.14 we get a good idea of the total value.
really mean this: The same holds true for decimals. Consider the follow-
ing approximation for the square root of two, 1.414214. To
3.14 = 3 + 1⁄10 + 4⁄100 an untrained eye, this expression is overly complicated.
It’s the sum of an integer and six different fractions, each
But this can be simplified to the following: with a different denominator. It consists of parts mea-
sured in millionths, parts too small to intuitively grasp. Yet
3.14 = 3 + 1⁄10 + 4⁄100 = 3 + 1⁄10 + 1⁄25 = 3 +  +  when we look at it, we immediately see a number close
to one and a half, or a little more than 1.4. The beauty
Just as we ignore the plus signs between the parts of our of the decimal system is that it gives as little or as much
decimal representations, so did the ancient Egyptians. information as you need. I can view the representation
They might represent the quantity 3.14 as 3 a; sg or in of the approximation of the root as a little more than 1.4
hieroglyphs as AAA IS PSSAAAAA. I think part of the problem mod- or a little more than 1.41 or a little more than 1.414. With
ern mathematicians have in appreciating Egyptian math- each phrase I’m forced to tolerate more complexity in ex-
ematics is the phrase we use to describe their numbers, change for more accuracy. The best part is that the choice
“unit fractions.” We compare their system to our system is ours. The rapidly declining significance of the place val-
of fractions instead of to our decimal system, with which ues gives us power to adjust our number interpretations
it has far more in common. to our needs. It gives us a quick approximation together
To truly comprehend the Egyptian system of fractions, with an accurate estimation.
we must deeply understand the properties of our deci- The Egyptian system does exactly the same thing.
mal system that make it so effective. Imagine that you Their representation of 3.141, 3 a; sg a;;;, can be quickly
won the lottery. Someone calls you up on the phone and assessed as a little more than 3 1⁄10 . If they need more ac-
tells you that you won 28 million and .... At this point curacy, they can include more “digits.” For contrast, let’s
your phone drops the signal. The caller was going to say compare this system to our fractional system. Try to
$28,732,593, but they only got off two of the eight digits. guess the rough value of 4586⁄1310. Can you come up with

This content downloaded from

195.43.22.135 on Fri, 16 Oct 2020 16:35:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
16   Chapter 2

an estimate? Even if you can, do you have any idea how The Best Thing since Sliced Bread
close your approximation is? However, in Egyptian this
An Intuitive Model for Egyptian Fractions
number is 3 s ada;, which is obviously a number less than
a thousandth away from 3 ½. Clearly the Egyptian system One of the most common duties of an ancient Egyptian
has more in common with our place-value system. Just scribe was to pay the workers. This was not always easy
like our decimal system, there’s an easy balance between because they often received shares for pay and not a set
accuracy and estimation. salary. A scribe would receive some amount of food and
One common observation of the Egyptian system of have to divvy it out fairly according to each worker’s share
fractions is that they never would write the same fraction value. Not every job had equal shares, just as today not
twice within one number. So you never see a number like every job has an equal salary. For the purpose of this sec-
7 g  g. This so-called rule is more likely the misinterpreta- tion, however, we’ll assume everyone has a share value of 1.
tion of a more general rule of thumb. Think of our deci- Assume that seven workers get a loaf of bread to share.
mal representation of this number: This isn’t very realistic because they were usually paid in
grain, but let’s accept it for argument’s sake. The scribe
7 g g = 7 + 1⁄5  + 1⁄5 = 7 + 0.2 + 0.2 = 7.4
realizes that one loaf divided between seven men means
Our placement system refuses to accept repeated dig- that each gets a seventh, which the scribe would record as
its, which is perhaps the reason we take this for granted. If j in his records.
we tried to force 7 g g into our decimal system we might
get something like this: 7.2.2. We would then interpret this
as a number close to 7.2, but it isn’t. It’s actually 7.4, and
7.2 is a bad approximation. Similarly the Egyptians would
not tolerate g g. It’s not close to a fifth. It’s twice as big as One loaf of bread cut up to feed seven workers.
a fifth. To be off by 100% in an approximation is terrible.
The Egyptians would write this fraction as d ag. The frac- So far everything is working out well. However, the
tion is close to a third, not a fifth. It’s a third and a little bit next day the workers get four loaves of bread. The scribe
more. It’s important that ag is significantly smaller than d could cut each loaf of bread into seven pieces and give
because it is a refinement of an approximation. So they each worker four, but it seems like too much cutting and
know it’s basically a third, and if they need more accuracy, the workers won’t appreciate all the small pieces. The
they can add the fifteenth. scribe gets an idea and decides to cut each loaf in half.
The rule applies to more than just equal fractions. The Now he has eight pieces, enough to give each worker one
Egyptians would never write g h, since a sixth is too close and he has one left over.
to a fifth to be a refinement. This number is not close to
a fifth—it is almost twice as much. So they would instead
write d d;. We can easily check to see that these represent
the same value as follows:
g + h = 1⁄5 + 1⁄6 = 6⁄30 + 5⁄30 = 11⁄30
d + d; = 1⁄3 + 1⁄30 = 10⁄30 + 1⁄30 = 11⁄30
As a result, Egyptian fractions are fairly easy to read. The loaves cut in half make one piece for each of the
But isn’t it difficult to work with fractions that have radi- seven workers with one left over.
cally different denominators? We will see that it is true
only if you stick to the modern method, but not if you Being an honest scribe, he doesn’t keep the one re-
calculate like an ancient Egyptian. maining piece for himself but cuts it into seven pieces,

This content downloaded from

195.43.22.135 on Fri, 16 Oct 2020 16:35:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 f r ac ti ons   17

one for each worker. The size of the smaller pieces is a for the 16 workers. We’ll perform the first slice and mark
seventh of a half, which is a fourteenth, since 7 × 2 is 14. off the 16 slices that will be distributed.
We now know that each worker gets h of a loaf with
2 slices left over. If the scribe now cuts the remaining 2
slices into eight pieces, he gets 16 smaller slices, which is
one for each worker. The size of these smaller slices is fk
since we cut an eighth of a sixth and 8 × 6 is 48. This makes
3
⁄16 equal to h fk. The final answer is as follows:
Solution: h fk
When the eighth piece is cut into seven, the smaller pieces
can be handed out to the workers.

So each worker gets a half loaf and a fourteenth of a loaf,

which the scribe records as s  af.
Note that we’ve just performed our first Egyptian divi-
sion involving fractions. We now know that 4 ¸ 7 = s af.
Although this was not their typical method of division,
it does show how natural the Egyptian system is. It’s also
possible that their method of fractions was formed from The remaining two slices get cut into eighths and
similar considerations. distributed to the 16 workers.
Let’s try another division. Practice: Divide 2 by 5 using “sliced bread.” Make your
first cuts as thirds.
Example: Divide 3 by 16 using “sliced bread.”
Answer: d ag
Before we can begin, we need at least 16 slices so each
worker can get one. If we were to cut each loaf into four
Practice: Divide 4 by 18 using “sliced bread.” Make your
pieces, we would get only 12 slices. Mathematically, this
first cuts as fifths.
tells us that 3 ¸ 16 is smaller than f, so we can’t write the
division as f plus some other fractions. If we cut each loaf Answer: g fg
into 6 slices, we get 18 slices, which is more than enough
Note that some divisions can’t be done in two slices.
Consider the following problem:
Example: Divide 4 by 5 using “sliced bread.”

Three loaves to be divided between 16 workers. After cutting Four loaves cut in half with each of five workers getting one slice.
them in sixths, each worker gets one, leaving two slices. Three halves are left over.

This content downloaded from

195.43.22.135 on Fri, 16 Oct 2020 16:35:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
18   Ch apter 2

If we cut the loaves in two, we’ll get eight slices. We three pieces in half we would get six halves, enough to
hand out five of them to each of the five workers, leaving give one to each of the five workers.
three halves. We can now cut both the half and the remaining whole
We can treat these three remaining halves just as into five pieces each. So now each worker gets a half, a
we would three whole loaves. In order to divide three fifth of a half, and a fifth, or equivalently s a; g.
“loaves” into five, we can cut each in half. Note that these

The half and the whole loaf are each cut into fifths.
The three remaining halves can be cut in half. Five of the six Each worker gets two slices, one small and one large.
pieces are distributed between the workers.
Answer 2: s g a;
are already halves so half of a half is a fourth. Now the
Note that we got two different answers for the same
three halves become six pieces of size f, of which we can
problem. This means that Egyptian fractions can be writ-
give one to each worker leaving one of the fourths.
ten in more than one way. Specifically we see for the
We can now cut the remaining fourth into five pieces,
above problem that f s; is the same as g a;.
giving each worker a piece of size s;. This makes 4⁄5 equal
to s f s;. Practice: Divide 5 by 7 in two ways using “sliced bread.”

Answer: s h sf ahk or s j af

You might argue that having more than one way to

The remaining quarter is cut in five pieces and given to the workers. write a number is extremely awkward, but as I mentioned
in the introduction, we see difficulties in alien systems far
Answer 1: s f s; more easily than we notice them in our own. In our num-
ber system all of the following are exactly the same.
The above example shows us that divisions might re-
quire three or more fractions in the solution. This should 1.75=175%=7⁄4=13⁄4=63⁄36
not come as a surprise since Egyptian fractions are closer
At least the Egyptian system is consistent with the way
to our decimals than to our fractions. You should real-
it portrays numbers even though they are not exactly the
ize that just as decimals may require a lot of digits, like
same.
8.77928347723, so Egyptian math may require many
fractions.
Note that in the above problem we did not need to cut Filling the Void: The fraction 3
all of the original four pieces in half. By cutting the first
Once each year the star Sirius would disappear behind the
sun. Toward the end of this period, the Egyptians would
scan the skies at dawn, searching for its return. The first
day of its reappearance marked the beginning of a new
year. This sign from the gods foretold the coming of the
inundation—soon the Nile would flood, ending the har-
vest season. All of Egypt would then be covered by water
except for the settlements on the banks and the higher
This time only three of the loaves are cut in half. islands of the delta. There wasn’t much for the Egyptians

This content downloaded from

195.43.22.135 on Fri, 16 Oct 2020 16:35:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 f r ac ti o ns   19

to do except wait for the flood to recede, and yet this was
the most crucial time in the Egyptian year.
The flood carried with it the two most valuable re-
sources in Egypt, water and topsoil. Obviously water is as The length is estimated by the marks the point falls between.
good as gold in a land surrounded by desert. The Egyp-
tians built barriers to trap the flood waters and use them
for irrigation in the drier seasons. Water was so precious
that restricting its flow onto your neighbor’s farm was an
offense punishable by damnation during your soul’s final
judgment in the Hall of Osiris.
The flood waters also brought the most fertile topsoil
found in the Mediterranean. During its four-thousand- The pencil is between 8.6 and 8.7 inches.
mile journey, the waters of the Nile picked up nutrients
and then scattered them throughout Egypt, enabling a approximate the pencil length as 8.6, we will be off by at
huge civilization to flourish in the desert. The color of this most 0.1 inches.
rich soil lent the very name used by the Egyptians to de- There are a couple of things we should note. The first
scribe their home, the Black Land. is that the distance between the ruler’s marks determines
The size of the flood varied from year to year. Some the accuracy of the measurement. In fact, this distance is
farmland was replenished annually. Other areas received exactly the maximum error. The latter can be calculated
the life-bringing waters only in high-flood years. The by subtraction. The above pencil point falls between the
scribes of Egypt assessed the value of farmland based on 8.6 and 8.7 mark, and hence the maximum error is 8.7 –
how likely it was to be inundated. Too many years of low 8.6 = 0.1. We should also note that in a decimal measure-
waters could result in famine for a culture that was overly ment system, the distance between marks is uniform. This
dependent on the bounty of the Nile. However, if the makes the error the same no matter where on the ruler
flood was too high, their homes on the banks would have our measurement occurs. This is not true for Egyptian
been threatened. The Egyptians needed to know the ex- fractions.
tent of a year’s flood, so they invented the nilometer. This If we made a ruler marked with Egyptian fractions,
measuring device is essentially a stone stairway that de- it would look like the following diagram. In the middle
scended to the Nile. As the waters rose, individual stairs would be the mark for s since it’s half way. Similarly,
would be covered in water, and marks on the nilometer one-third of the way over, we would find d, and so on.
would give the depth of the water. Hence the nilometer The marks would become more tightly packed for the
was essentially a giant ruler built into the Nile. smaller measurements. They get so close that eventually
Reading a ruler tells us a lot about the way decimals we would have to stop marking the ruler so they didn’t
are used to make approximations. Consider measuring a overlap.
pencil with a ruler. In the diagram below, the ruler shows The pencil being measured below is 3⁄16 of a foot long.
us that the pencil is somewhere between 8 and 9 inches. The ruler shows it being longer than a sixth of a foot but
If we approximate the length as 8 inches, we’ll be off by
at most 1 inch.
If we want more accuracy, we could look at the smaller
ruler marks indicating tenths of an inch between 8 and
9. Below we can see that the tip of the pencil falls be-
tween the sixth and seventh tick mark between 8 and 9. The marks are close below :2, and hence the
So the pencil length is between 8.6 and 8.7 inches. If we measurement is more accurate.

This content downloaded from

195.43.22.135 on Fri, 16 Oct 2020 16:35:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
20   Chapter 2

less than a fifth. If we convert 3⁄16 into Egyptian fractions, error term, the error is 66 2⁄3% of the estimate, which is too
we get h fk. The Egyptian number verifies that it is a little, big to be considered accurate.
specifically a forty-eighth, more than a sixth. This seems to fly in the face of our interpretation of
Someone measuring the pencil with the Egyptian ruler Egyptian fractions as being a system of arbitrarily good
can tell that it’s more than a sixth but can’t exactly tell approximations. However, the Egyptians solved this
by how much. Since the marks are not uniformly distrib- problem, and they did it in the most obvious way. Think-
uted, it’s not as easy to know the largest possible error ing in terms of rulers, the difficulty arises because there
as it would be with a more conventional ruler. However, are no marks on the right-hand side of the ruler. So the
we can calculate the error by finding the distance be- Egyptians included an extra a mark or two.
tween the h and g marks using subtraction. Since I haven’t
taught you yet how Egyptians subtract fractions, we’ll use
modern methods.
g – h = 1⁄5 – 1⁄6
The common denominator is 30 and we can get both to be
30 by multiplying the 1⁄5 by 6 and the 1⁄6 by 5 giving
⁄5  6 – 1  5⁄6  5 = 6⁄30 – 5⁄30 = 1⁄30 = d;
1  6 The hieroglyphic 2/3.

Note that the error of a measurement between g and h

is d; and 30 is 5  6. It’s not difficult to show using algebra By far, the more common of the two fractions added to
that this is always true provided the Egyptian fractions their “ruler” is 2⁄3, symbolized by the following hieroglyph.
are adjacent numbers. Hence the error measurement be- We will use the modern transcription, , for this symbol.
tween a; and aa would be at most aa;. A mathematician The choice of symbol is truly inspired. It looks like the
would phrase this as “the error of an Egyptian fraction is mouth and is used to denote a fraction over the number
roughly the square of the smallest term.” 1 and “a half.” This is in fact what 2⁄3 is. In modern terms
We actually didn’t even need to subtract the two val- we get
ues; we could just have easily noticed that the two lines on
1 1⁄2 =(3⁄3)= 1⁄3/2 = 2⁄3 = 
the ruler are “really close.” They’re all really close on the
left side of the ruler, and hence all measurement on this We’ll look at this relation in more detail later. Right
half would be fairly accurate. However, there seems to be now let’s see the impact it has on approximations in mea-
a problem with the right side. The following pencil is 5⁄6 of surement. Here’s our previous pencil measurement using
a foot long. The best our ruler can do now is to estimate it a ruler with the  mark added.
as more than s. In fact we can write 5⁄6 as s  d in Egyptian
fractions. Unfortunately, a half is a bad approximation for
5
⁄6. If we treat the s as the approximation and the d as the

The distance between the :3 mark and the pencil tip is smaller than that
of the :2 mark. Hence the error in measurement is reduced.

Objects that extend into the right half of the ruler are subject to bad Now the ruler reads 2⁄3 and a little more, and the 2⁄3 is a
approximations. The error is the distance from the :2 to the pencil tip. much better approximation than the 1⁄2 we had previously.

This content downloaded from

195.43.22.135 on Fri, 16 Oct 2020 16:35:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 f r ac ti ons   21

The Egyptians would express the length of the pencil as to , since the mathematical rules involving it are clearly
  h rather than s  d. If we treat the length as roughly  spelled out by ancient texts.
with an error of h, we get a 25% error, which is much bet- When I first learned of the  symbol, I was uncomfort-
ter than the 66 2⁄3% error we got with s  d. able. Mathematicians like consistency and order. This sym-
You might argue that the gap on the ruler to the right bol, being unique, bucked the rules and had to be treated
of the  is still a bit large. If you do, you’ll find that a fairly with special operations. However, as I became more pro-
small group of ancient Egyptians agree with you. It’s ex- ficient with Egyptian mathematics, I began to understand
tremely rare, but there are instances of a special symbol that this gave their mathematical system added flexibility.
for ¾ being used. Most Egyptians seem to have felt that In order to begin to appreciate the versatility of Egyptian
the 2⁄3 symbol was sufficient, and we will restrict ourselves math, we’ll need to learn its basic operations.

This content downloaded from

195.43.22.135 on Fri, 16 Oct 2020 16:35:01 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms