For most people maths is numbers is arithmetic. So where better place to start than with the Ancient Egyptian numbers themselves.

Their number system was decimal in nature but did not make use of place value. As a result of this, they didn't have a symbol for zero. These are the hieroglyphs:

=1	=10	=100
	=1,000
=10,000	=100,000	=1,000,000

I always think the number for a million looks as though the person is holding out his arms in amazement at how unbelievably big it is!

So the number 1,342 would look like this:

Notice how they stack the hieroglyphs rather than writing them in one straight line.

Now try one yourself.......
How would an Ancient Egyptian write the number 2,563? Click here to find out the answer

Now you've got the idea of whole numbers let's look at fractions.

The Ancient Egyptians used unit fractions e.g. e.g 1/4, 1/7, 1/15. Unit fractions are those fractions which have the number 1 as nominator (the number on the top). Their usual way of writing fractions was to use the word r, meaning part, with the denominator written below and, if need be, beside it as well e.g.

="part 12" which is equivalent to our twelfth or 1/12.

Non unit-fractions like 2/5 or 7/8 did not exist- though there was one exception : 2/3.

Why did the Ancient Egyptians use fractions when only unit fractions were available to them?

The answer is that they could represent any fraction by adding unit fractions together e.g. 4/7 would be written as 1/2 + 1/14.

More puzzling still is what the Ancient Egyptian's concept of a fraction was!