EGYPTIAN FRACTIONS | ||||
| مجلة المجمع العلمي المصري | ||||
| Article 7, Volume 89, Issue 89, 2014, Page 365-386 | ||||
| Document Type: المقالة الأصلية | ||||
| DOI: 10.21608/jfnile.2014.109152 | ||||
 View on SCiNiTO | ||||
| Author | ||||
| Mina B. Abd-el-Malek* | ||||
| Department of Engineering Mathematics and Physics, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt. | ||||
| Abstract | ||||
| Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics inform us much about the life of the people of ancient Egypt, including their knowledge in mathematics. The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, and many others, presents to us their basic number system which is very similar to what we have except in one way which is their concept of fractions. In fact the ancient Egyptians had a way of writing numbers in so many forms, but what recorded in their papyrus was limited. To represent the fraction 1/9, say, they would simply use the symbol for 9, and then place another symbol on top of it takes the oval form which represents the mouth in the ancient Egyptian alphabet. In general, the reciprocal of an integer “n” was written in the same way. They had no other way of writing fractions, except for special symbols for ½, ¼, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64, and 2/3 that were modified over different Kingdoms. | ||||
| Keywords | ||||
| EGYPTIAN FRACTIONS | ||||
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