Hieroglyphics and Egyptian Mathematics

For so long , scientists thought that the pictures stood for what
they look like ie. A picture of a pot meant a pot .
Now they know this is not true ie. A picture of an owl did not
mean an owl , it meant ‘M’ .

When hieroglyphics first started , a picture stood for what it
looked like .
They used pictures to make lists ie. They would show a cow ,
and then the number .
This wasn’t enough , if they wanted to write it’s name , they
couldn’t do this , so 24 ‘sound signs’ were made . One sound
stood for one sign , but the sentences were too long , so they
were put into groups , and just like in the English language , sh
was one group .
Now there were hundreds of different signs .
Then because there was so many signs , and some could mean
more than one thing , they would sometimes put a picture of the
thing they were talking about , at the end of the sentence .

Numbers
Writing 99 was quite slow , because unlike our system , there
was only 7 digits in the Egyptians numbers .
Also , they had no zero , division , or multiplication , so writing
4 x 3 , they would have to say 4 + 4 + 4 .
They also used fractions , but only with a 1 for the numerator so
to get 4/5 , they would write - 1/5 + 1/5 + 1/5 + 1/5

Calendars
The Civil Calendar :
Just like our calendar , they divided it into 12 months , in each
was 3 ten day weeks (30 days , just like ours).
There were 3 seasons , each had 4 months .
There were 5 holy festival days at the end of each year .

Now because the civil calendar did not allow for leap years , it
got more and more out each year .
This upset the farmers calendars , as at the same time every
year ,
they were eclipsed by the sun for 70 then the star Sothis would
appear again . This would be the start of the Nile flood .
So this calendar naturally accounted for leap years .

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