Ancient Egyptian Math Skills

Around 6000 BC, the ancient Egyptians settled in the fertile Nile valley, where they began observing lunar phases and seasonal patterns for agricultural and religious reasons.

Within their society, mathematics played a pivotal role, being applied to tasks such as measuring time, establishing straight lines, evaluating Nile flood levels, computing taxes, surveying land areas, managing financial transactions, and even in culinary endeavors.

The numerical system employed by ancient Egyptians endured from about 3000 BC until the early first millennium AD. This system relied on multiples of ten, often rounded to higher powers, and was expressed through hieroglyphs. Distinct symbols represented one unit, ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand, hundred thousand, and one million.

In contrast to the positional notation of the decimal system, the ancient Egyptians did not embrace such a concept. Instead, their proficiency lay in working with unit fractions, where the numerator was consistently one. These fractions were skillfully applied to express volumes of irregularly shaped objects and to address problems related to areas and volumes.
Ancient Egyptian Math Skills