The Evolution of Ancient Egyptian Weights and Measures

Ancient Egypt, renowned for its architectural marvels and cultural advancements, also stands out in history as the birthplace of standardized measurement systems. Dating back to approximately 3100 B.C., the Egyptians introduced the concept of scales to facilitate trade, although they relied on a barter system rather than coined currency. Instead, they assigned values to metals such as gold, silver, and copper, laying the groundwork for a structured economy.

The earliest concrete evidence of standardized units of weight and the use of weighing scales dates to around 2600 B.C. during the Fourth Dynasty of Egypt, particularly evident in artifacts excavated from the reign of Sneferu. These artifacts, including Deben balance weights, provide insight into the precision and sophistication of ancient Egyptian craftsmanship.

Throughout the Old and Middle Kingdom periods, spanning approximately 2025 to 1700 B.C., inscribed weights corroborate the existence of units weighing around 12-14 grams and 27 grams. References to "small and large deben" in accounts from the late Middle Kingdom suggest variations in weight measurement standards. Furthermore, distinctions are made between a gold deben and a copper deben, with the former likely equivalent to 12-14 grams and the latter to 27 grams.

However, during the New Kingdom, significant changes occurred in the measurement system. The deben, which previously equated to approximately 12-14 grams, was now standardized to 91 grams. This adjustment reflects the evolving needs of the society and its economy over time.

For finer measurements, the qedet, equivalent to 1/10 of a deben, and the shematy, equal to 1/12 of a deben, were utilized. These subdivisions allowed for greater precision in commercial transactions and further underscored the meticulous attention to detail evident in ancient Egyptian trade practices.

In conclusion, the ancient Egyptians' development of standardized weights and measures represents a pivotal advancement in human civilization. From the introduction of scales for trade to the refinement of measurement units over successive dynasties, their contributions laid the foundation for modern systems of commerce and quantification.
The Evolution of Ancient Egyptian Weights and Measures

Geometry in ancient history

Geometry, one of the most important branches of mathematics, has its roots in countries such as Egypt, Babylon, China, Greece, and Vedic India. Around 2100 BC, the concept of area is first recognized in Babylonian clay tablets, and 3-dimensional volume is discussed in an Egyptian papyrus. This begins the study of geometry.

In Egypt, ancient Egyptians developed geometry from the ‘Age of Pyramids’. The evidence of usage of geometry is seen on the walls of temples and written on papyrus. The Moscow Mathematical Papyrus is a well-known mathematical papyrus containing various problems in arithmetic, geometry, and algebra.

The Babylonians of 2,000 to 1,600 BC knew much about navigation and astronomy, which required knowledge of geometry. Ancient Babylonians used studies of triangles techniques 1500 years before Greeks. The ancient Babylonians were using geometrical calculations to track the biggest objects in space.

The Babylonians were also responsible for dividing the circumference of a circle into 360 equal parts. They also used the Pythagorean Theorem (long before Pythagoras), performed calculations involving ratio and proportion, and studied the relationships between the elements of various triangles.

Beginning about the 6th century BC, the Greeks gathered and extended this practical knowledge and from it generalized the abstract subject now known as geometry, which is derived from Ancient Greek words – ‘Geo’ means ‘Earth’ and ‘metron’ means ‘measurement’.

Herodotus in 5th BC credits the Egyptians with inventing surveying in order to reestablish property values after the annual flood of the Nile. Similarly, eagerness to know the volumes of solid figures derived from the need to evaluate tribute, store oil and grain, and build dams and pyramids.

Alexandria became one of the important centers of Greek learning and this is where Euclid who is often referred to as the “Father of Geometry”, wrote perhaps the most important and successful mathematical textbook of all time, the “Stoicheion” or “Elements”.
Geometry in ancient history

History of ancient fraction

The word fraction actually comes from the Latin "fractio" which means to break. Many cultures have developed fractions (and decimals) independently.

Around 1800 BC: Fractions were first studied by the Egyptians in their study of Egyptian fractions.

Very few scrolls remained which found their way to antique collectors. The Lahun papyrus forms part of the Kahun Papyri and dates back to c. 1825 B.C. It contains an incomplete table of Egyptian fractions 2/n (n=3,…,21) (a complete version is in the Rhind Papyrus).

The huge disadvantage of the Egyptian system for representing fractions is that it is very difficult to do any calculations.

Around 300 BC the Greeks were writing fractions using their alphabet to represent the numbers. The number 2 was written as β and the number 5 was written as ε .

In Ancient Rome, fractions were only written using words to describe part of the whole. They were based on the unit of weight which was called the as. One "as" was made up of 12 uncia so fractions were centered on twelfths.

The Babylonians had one of the oldest written records of fractions and decimals, dating from around 2000 BC. While the current number system uses base 10 (that is, there are 10 digits that make up all our numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9), the Babylonian’s number system was organized around the number 60, so current system say it is base 60.

By about 500AD, the Indians had developed a system from a way of writing called brahmi, which had nine symbols and a zero. The knowledge of fractions in India can be traced to ancient times. The fractions one-half (ardha) and three-fourths (tri-pada) occurred already in one of the oldest vedic works the R. gveda (circa 1000 BC). In mathematical works Sulba-s´utras (circa 500 BC), fractions were not only mentioned, but were used in statements and solutions of problems.
History of ancient fraction

Ancient history of numbers

As everyone began counting by using their ten fingers, most of the numbering systems that were invented used base 10.

The Mayans, Aztecs, Celt and Basques, looked down at their feet and realised that their toes could be counted like fingers so they chose base 20.

The first signs of the Egyptian hieroglyphic number system date to around 3000 BC. It uses 10 as a radix, thus it is a decimal system. Ancient Egyptians had no intermediate symbols for five, fifty or five hundred. But they had symbols for large numbers such as ten thousand, one hundred thousand, one million and ten million.

There were prosperous cities in Ancient Egypt with markets and -'business houses, and with an established government over all the land. The keeping of the commercial and government records necessitated the use of large numbers. Therefore, the Egyptians made up a set of numerals by which they could express numbers of different values from units up to hundreds of thousands.

The hieroglyphic form uses symbols for powers of ten, relying on repetition for other numbers. As the Egyptians wrote from right to left, the largest power of ten appears to the right of the other numerals.

Around 3000 BC, in the regions of the lower Tigris and Euphrates valleys the Sumerians used 60 as its number base, known as a sexagesimal system. Numerals were written from left to right and they used unique symbols for numbers 1, 10, and 60. Some measurements we still use this system: 60 seconds is a minute, 60 minutes is an hour. Their system is preserved in clay tablets in various excavations.

The Greek number system of around 500 BC. is known as the Ionian number system, was mostly likely inspired by the demotic number system of the Egyptians. It is a decimal number system and comes with two notations, one older, cumbersome and limiting, and a newer one using twenty-seven symbols of the alphabet—which was actually only comprised of twenty-four symbols, so three were borrowed from an older alphabet.

The Romans also number system, but it was a little bit different from the Egyptian type. Roman numerals use a system of addition and subtraction to create numerals.

Around 400 C.E. Maya Indians were doing computations related to their rituals and calendars, and number system was based on the number 20, known as a vigesimal system, with 5 as an intermediate base. While Incas did not have a complicated system of computation. They seem to have been more concerned with the simpler task of record−keeping.

The zero was very important in the development of the Hindu number system, as it allowed for the introduction of a place-value decimal system using only nine other symbols. This made calculations much simpler than any previous system could have provided.

Current number system derives from the Arabic positional system which had its precursor in the Babylonian system.
Ancient history of numbers

History of rainbow

Rainbow as a scientific problem appears to have been treated first by Aristotle in the history of optics.

As long ago as in the 3rd-2nd centuries BC, Alexander of Aphrodisias tried to describe the rainbow as a phenomenon involving light and colour; he is regarded as the discoverer of the darker region between the primary and the secondary rainbows.

Aristotle (383-322 BC) was the first one to give a complete description of the optical phenomenon, in Book III of his Meteorology. He proposed that the rainbow is actually an unusual kind of reflection of sunlight from clouds. The light is reflected at a fixed angle. giving rise to a circular cone of "rainbow rays. " In the opinion of Aristotle the rainbow comes into existence in a hemisphere, the centre of which is the observer’s eye and the base of which is the horizontal line,

Ibn al-Haytham (965-1039) treated the formation of rainbow in an article called Maqala fi al-Hala wa qaws quzah. In this article he explained the formation of rainbow as an image, which forms at a concave mirror. If the rays of light coming from a farther light source reflect to any point on axis of the concave mirror, they form concentric circles in that point. When it is supposed that the sun as a farther light source, the eye of viewer as a point on the axis of mirror and a cloud as a reflecting surface, then it can be observed the concentric circles are forming on the axis.

The Persian astronomer and mathematician Qutb Al-Dı ̄n al-Shira ̄zı ̄ (1236–1311) and his pupil al-Fa ̄risı ̄, also known as Kama ̄l al-Dı ̄n (1260–1320), tried to give a first mathematical explanation of the rainbow, which was quite accurate for its age, since it was based on the phenomenon of refraction as described in the Book of Optics by Alhazen.

The angle formed by the rainbow rays and the incident sunlight was first measured in 1266 by Roger Bacon. He measured an angle of about 42 degrees; the secondary bow is about eight degrees higher in the sky.

In 1304 the German monk Theodoric of Freiberg rejected Aristot­le's hypothesis that the rainbow results from collective reflection by the rain­drops in a cloud. He suggested instead that each drop is individually capable of producing a rainbow. Moreover, he test­ed this conjecture in experiments with a magnified raindrop: a spherical flask filled with water. He was able to trace the path followed by the light rays that make up the rainbow.

Kama ̄l al-Dı ̄n’s experiments were repeated by Descartes (1596-1650) when he got interested in rainbow. He made some experiments in the light of the sun, with glassy sphere full of water. Standing on foot and directing his back to the sun, he watched through a hole in the glassy sphere, shaking it upward and downward, he finally discovered brightness at the bottom of the sphere. Kama ̄l al-Dı ̄n made similar experiments and obtained the same results as Descartes, many years before him.

In the 17thcentury the rainbow became a strictly physical phenomenon, the object of rigorous investigations according to the law of reflection and refraction.

History of rainbow

Beginnings of Science

Beginnings of Science
The oldest known treatise on surgery..... written in Egypt 5,000 years ago, discloses  the thoughts of the earliest man who reveals a scientific attitude of mind.

This treatise is therefore the earliest document in the history of science. A history of science might be based on some more or less logical system of definitions and classification. Such systems and such points of view belong to relatively recent and mature periods.

The periods at which primitive man of different races began to have conscious appreciation of the phenomenon of nature, of number magnitude and geometric forms can never be known, nor the time at which their elementary notions began to be so classified and associated as to deserve the name of science.

Very early in any civilization, however there must obviously have been developed simple processes of counting and adding, of time and distance measurement, of the geometry and arithmetic involved in land measurement and in architectural design and construction.
Beginnings of Science

Calendar in ancient culture

Calendars are manmade tools used to track time. They have become almost indispensible tools of human civilization.

Ancient cultures develop calendars to keep track of longer stretches of time that coincide with the four seasons.

Calendars are based upon astronomical observations, marking the passage of time using the phases of the moon and movement of the Sun. Civilizations from Asia to the Americas develop calendars based upon the phases of the moon.

Early calendars were usually for agriculture, financial, religious and political uses and often did not include a year count. The first historians to use calendar date systems for relating events were the Greek historians.

Ancient Greek calendars go back to early Antiquity but evidence of how they were structures and reckoned begins only in the sixth century BC. In general the calendars of Greece were lunar, but their lunar character could be disrupt by deliberate interference or tempering.

The main Athenian calendar is often called ‘archontic’ or ‘festival calendar’ - although its use went far beyond the determination of festival dates – to distinguish it from the so-called ‘prytanic calendar’, peculiar to Athens, that was used at Athens alongside it.

It wasn’t until Rome was fully under the rule of Augustus Caesar that calendars were used to refer to particular year names or numbers and month and day dates.
Calendar in ancient culture

Egyptians develop a hieroglyphic system of writing

Hieroglyphics make their first appearance around 3100 BC. This system of writing was developed by Egyptians. The word hieroglyph actually comes from the Greek and means ‘sacred writing in stone’.

Hieroglyphics consist of pictures that depict common objects. As a more sophisticated system develops pictures are used to represent sounds so the writing could be read phonetically.

Hieroglyphic developed ins stages, as was the case with all writing systems. At first, only the simplest symbols were developed. Then the number of symbols increased, making it easier to read. It was essentially unchanged for several thousand years until about 500 BC when the number of symbols again increased dramatically. The demise of hieroglyphic writing coincided with the rise of Christianity.

Discovering the scientific advances of the ancient world translating scrolls and other hieroglyphics writings has allowed modern scholars to learn about the achievements of the ancient Egyptians.

For centuries after the close of the Egyptian empire, hieroglyphics were a mystery that no one could read. Then in 1822 Jean Francois Champollion, a brilliant young French linguist discovered the key to reading the Rosetta Stone, a tablet with writing in hieroglyphics, demotic and Greek, Hieroglyphic writing could be deciphered.
Egyptians develop a hieroglyphic system of writing

History of map-making

Antique maps are categorized as imaginative illustrations of their subjects: creative nonfiction and it might apply to the art of map-making.

For this reason, these pioneers of map-making felt it necessary to separate their ideas of ‘true’ map-making from maps that relied on exaggeration or imagination.

The idea of map-making was known in Egypt, where plans of particularly districts or objects as mines, houses and temples were being drawn up a early as 1400 BC.

Anaximander (611-547 BC) was the first among the Greeks to represent the details of the surface of the earth by maps. His map showed the world as a flat disc with named parts for the Mediterranean, Italy and Sicily.

The earliest periods in mapping in both the Western world and China involved understanding the earth’s shape and size. Contrary to popular belief, the essentially spherical shape of the earth and been recognized by the Greeks as early as the fourth century BC.

Claudius Ptolemy (98-168 AD), a Greek who lived and worked during the peak of the Roman Empire, is the foremost figure of map-making history.

His major contribution to map-making was a book known as Geographia, which included instructions for making map projections, for making world and sectional maps and for using latitude and longitude which also listed coordinates for about 8,000 places.
History of map-making

Sumerians write using pictograms

Writing was an essential development in ancient civilizations, allowing people to record observations, rituals and other information for future generations.

The Sumerian lived in Mesopotamia. They established cities, farmed, herded animals, hunted, fished and traded. As their trading increased they realized they needed a way to keep records. Around 3500 BC, the Sumerian people begin using pictograms as a form of writing. Unlike modern writing systems each picture or pictograms is a direct image of the object it represents.

Pictograms

The Sumerians used a reed stylus (stick) to carve the pictograms into wet clay tables. When the clay hardened the sorting became a permanent record.

Pictograms are a series of symbols depicting various objects and animals that are used to convey information. Each pictogram represents an object or an idea. Eventually the system expands to include more than 1000 different symbols.

The Sumerian pictograms evolved into what is known as cuneiform writing by using a wedge-shaped stylus, where the symbol represented the name of the thing than the actual thing itself.
Sumerians write using pictograms

Ancient history of calculus

Calculus comes from the Latin word for ‘pebble’ the primitive method of counting whose influence is also visible in the English word ‘calculation’.

The calculus had its origin in the logical difficulties encountered by the ancient Greek mathematicians in their attempt to express their intuitive ideas on the ratios or proportionalities of lines, which they vaguely recognized as continuous, in terms of numbers, which they regarded as discrete.

Archimedes (287 BC – 212 BC) developed a significant part of the calculus. The fundamental notion of the calculus - that of a limit - was well understood by Archimedes, although he did not call it by name.

The first known definition of continuity according to Aristotle (383-322 BC): A thing is continuous when of any two successive parts the limits at which they touch are one and the same and are, as the word implies, held together.

Indian mathematicians produced a number of works with some ideas of calculus. The formula for sum of the curve was first written by Aryabhata in 500 AD, order to find the volume of a cube, which was an important step in the development of integral calculus.

Indian astronomers also came very close to creating what now call calculus. They had advanced to the point where they could apply ideas from both integral and deferential calculus to derive the infinites series expansion of the sine, cosine and arctangent functions.

Early applications for calculus included the study of gravity and planetary motion, fluid flow and ship design and geometric curves and bridge engineering.
Ancient history of calculus

Measles in history

Measles probably began with the start of urban life in the Middle East around 3000 BC.

Some historians believe that a plague that killed a large part of the Athenian army in 430 to 429 BC was measles. As urbanization occurred in subsequent centuries, the proximity or larger populations nurtured epidemics with continued circulation of virus in cities. There were massive epidemics in the Roman Empire starting in 165 and in 251 AD, and two similar epidemics in China in 162 and 310.

Jews physician such as Al Yehudi had recognized the illness but without distinction between it and other rash disordered.

Measles was first documented by an Arabic physician called Rhazes.

Rhazes lived in the 10th century but he quoted other authors on measles form as far back s Al Yehudi, who lived in the 7th century.

He distinguished between smallpox and measles even though he believed that the two conditions were part of one morbid process.

Rhazes referred it the disease as widespread throughout the East and the same opinion is expressed by Avicenna and other Arabic writers of the tenth and eleventh centuries.

By the 17th century, some European also physicians had identified the differences between measles and small pox.

In 1846, a Danish physician Peter Panum studied a measles outbreak on the Faroe Islands and was the first to describe the clinical presentation, incubation and infectious nature of measles.

The introduction of measles vaccine in 1963 and its subsequent widespread use led to dramatic declines in the reported incidence of measles.
Measles in history

The Antikythera Mechanism

The earliest known purely mechanical clock appears to have been discovered on a ship wreck.

Shortly before Easter of 1900 a party of Greek sponge fishers returned from their normal fishing grounds near Tunisia, they were driven off course by a gale and found shelter close to Kythera, near the barren island of Antikythera.

They discovered the device known as the Antikythera mechanism, when they explored the shallow rock shelves below them which they had dropped their anchored.

At a depth of 42 meters they found a 50 m long ship wreck containing a plainly visible pile of bronze and marble statues. The Antikythera Mechanism or mechanical computing clock device is the most complex instrument of antiquity.

Subsequent exploration of the underwater site, by explorer Jacques Cousteau, enabled scientist to date the remnants of a ship to 87 BC.

Further analysis of the Antikythera mechanism with more advanced technologies has provided several recent discoveries.

Close examination revealed the fragment of a heavily encrusted, corroded, geared device measuring around 33 cm high, 17 cm wide and 9 cm thick.

Constructed of bronze and originally contained within a wooden frame, the device was engraved with a copious text, which appears to be the device’s operating manual.

In 1950s, it was realized by the science historian Derek Price that these were parts of an astronomical computer: a kind of solar and lunar calendar. 

Scientists concluded that the device was able to predict lunar and solar eclipse based on Babylonian eclipse algorithms, as well as to display some of the planetary and lunar positions, and even had gears to simulate irregularities in the Moon’s motion.

The Antikythera Mechanism process ho sophisticated Greek technology was. It was possibly constructed the school of Posidonius on the island of Rhodes.
The Antikythera Mechanism

The history of Greek science

The birth of Greek science and philosophy did not occur in what is now Greek itself but in the city of Miletus and their Hellenic colonies on the Aegean coasts of Asia Minor.

It is certain that Greek science in its origin was dependent on traditions that came from more ancient civilizations, notably from Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Herodotus was the first to suggest that the Greeks obtained their knowledge of astronomy from Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Greek sciences period can be divided into four main chronological divisions:
*Pre-Socratic period (600 BC – 400 BC)
*The century of Plato and Aristotle later the creation of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophies.
*Hellenistic period (300-100 BC)
*Greco-Roman period, from about 100 BC to 600 AD

One of the major features of Greek science is that most of its practitioners were autodidacts. Even those who studied under a philosophical giant seem, with very few exceptions, not to have been content to follow a path laid down by a predecessor.

They wished to carve out their own path, citing predecessors’ view when it suited them, and ignoring them likewise.

In medicine, to early Greeks, it had seemed as if there were differing forces or powers within their bodies, to which they gave a variety of names, Plato describes three competing ‘souls’ one located in the liver, one located in the heart and one located in the head.

Most other early Greek thinkers located most or all of the human soul in the heart, as did Aristotle and Zenon, and it remain part of the collection of ideas.

The Greek since was bound to decline because of the lack of balance between reason and experience, because of its organicist setting, or because of its functioning in a slave society, or it happened to decline with the advent of the Romans and of Christianity.
The history of Greek science

Ancient Roman technology

By the first century AD Rome had become the biggest and most advanced city in the world.

One of the things about ancient Roman civilization that most impresses people today is the Roman’s use of technology.

The ancient Romans came up with new technologies to improve the city’s sanitation systems, roads and buildings.

They developed a system of aqueducts that piped freshwater into the city, and they built sewers that removed the city’s waste.

The farmers grew olives, grapes, wheat and other fruits and vegetables. They used tools seeds and techniques created earlier throughout the Mediterranean world. These included irrigation systems and ox-drawn plows.

Ancient Rome’s have a vast network of roads that reached throughout the empire. More than 50,000 miles of roads extended from Rome to the farthest provinces.

Army engineers often designed and constructed roads as a means to swiftly move army legions from place to place and to keep them supplied.

The Romans developed new techniques and used materials such as volcanic soil from Pozzuoli, a village near Naples, to make their cement harder and stronger.

Some of the most important construction methods that the Romans used in their building projects were arches, vaults and domes. Arches support weight better than flat-topped openings.

A doctor in ancient Rome had little or no training. Most of them simply learned their skills as apprentices to other doctors.

Roman doctors tackled some surprisingly delicate operations, such as removing small tumors and repairing a hernia. They even removed cataracts from the eyes.

Their medical tools were often made from bronze, as this was a practical and relatively cheap way to produce surgical instruments, though the best doctors preferred instruments made from fine quality.
Ancient Roman technology

Ancient Chronology; Calendars and Measurement of time

Ancient Chronology; Calendars and Measurement of time
The frequent and obvious cycles of the moon furnished the earliest measure of time, each cycle being a lunar month.

In Sumer each month began with the new moon, which was carefully observed by the priests.

There were twelve months in the year and when the accumulated shortage (about 11 days each year) became too great and extra month was intercalated, a practice that continued until the reign of Darius (521-485 B.C).

At the summer solstice the rising sun shining straight down the main street of Babylon, furnished a gauge for adjustment of the calendar to the solar year.

In the Lower Egypt the year commenced with the annual rise of the Nile, which begins rather suddenly about the middle of July, a date marked astronomically by the rising at sunrise of the Dog Star, Sirius, the brightest of the fixed stars.

This is a striking event, nowhere more brilliant than in the vicinity of Cairo. In course of time it became evident that the return of Sirius was five days later than the completion of the year of twelve 30 day months, and the year was accordingly lengthened by the addition of five holidays.

The residual shortage of about 6 hours resulted in a slow periodic change of the beginning of the year which would return to its original position in about 1,458 years.

By means this “Sothic cycle,” that the civil calendar of Egypt was introduced in 4236 B.C. not only the earliest fixed date in history, but also the earliest date in the intellectual history of mankind.

The year was divided into three seasons – the inundation, the season of cultivation, and the harvest season.

The months, probably lunar at first, became 30 days, and this continued into historic time.

An edict of 238 B.C. introduced the leap year but the innovation was afterwards forgotten.

The artificial subdivision of the day and night into hours was achieved in Egypt by means of some form of the sun-dial for the day and of the water clock, or clepsydra, for - day and night having each twelve hours of varying lengths.

The earliest time piece known is an elaborate water-clock described by its maker Amenemhet on the wall of his tomb-chapel in the cemetery of Egyptian Thebes about 1550 B.C.

The Babylonians on the other hand by measuring the amount of water escaping slowly from a vessel full ascertained that the tome from the first appearance of the upper edge of the Sun to the moment the whole disk was visible was 1/720 of the entire tome from one sunrise to the next.

This period of day and night was then divided into 12 equal parts, one of which would thus equal twice the modern hours, and is the time required for the sun to travel 60 times its own diameter.
Ancient Chronology; Calendars and Measurement of time

Ancient Weight and Measures

Ancient Weight and Measures
Measurement, fundamental in science, had had its origin in trade and construction. The values of weights and measures in the Ancient East are known either from the actual instruments or from other sources, units of the same name differing considerably in value from place to place.

The oldest known stone weights are from a Sumerian temple at Lagash (about 3000 BC), each inscribed, “1 mana, Dudu High priests,” – in our scale about one ounce.

A later Assyria scale included the shekel, the mana = 60 shekels (about 1.1 lb.), and the talent = 60 mana.

The early Sumerian carpenters used a scale of digits equaling 0.65 inch.

The Babylonian cubit (form-arm) was 20.6 inches in our measure, and was divided into 30 digits.

The higher units were sexagesimal, ending in a parasang, or league, of about 3.5 English miles.

The Egyptian used decimal systems of weights and measures. The largest unit of weight, for measuring wheat, was about two pounds.

The cubit of the Pyramid Age, nearly the same length as the Babylonian cubit, was divided into hundredths.

But apparently for the convenience of workmen, the scale was usually marked also approximately into 7 palms, a palm being 4 digits.

The two systems were incommensurate, like our yard and meter.
Ancient Weight and Measures

History of Surgery - Trephination of the skull

History of Surgery - Trephination of the skull
Undoubtedly the most extraordinary story in the history of surgery is that, long before man could read or write, as long ago as 10,000 BC, surgeons were performing the operation of trephination or trepanning – boring or cutting out rings or squares of bones from skull – and just as remarkably, their patients usually recovered from the procedure.

Although the word ‘trepanation’ and trephination’ today are interchangeable in common practice, trepanation comes form the Greek trypanon, meaning a borer, while trephination is or more recent French origin and indicates an instrument revolving around a central spike.

Trepanation thus connotes scraping or cutting, while trephination describes drilling the skull, as in modern neurosurgical operations.

Different techniques of trepanation in ancient times, and in recent primitive communities, involved scraping away bone, making a circular groove so that a central core of the bone would loosen, boring and cutting away the bone, or making rectangular interesting incisions in the skull.

This story begins in 1865 when a general practitioner Dr Prunires, who was also an amateur archeologist, discovered in a prehistoric stone tomb in Central French a skull which bore a large artificial opening on its posterior aspect.

With it, he found a number of irregular pieces of bone which might have been cut from another skull.

He postulated that the skull had been perforated so that it might be used as a drinking cup.

Soon after this, a number of other holed skulls were found in other parts of France and Professor Paul Broca (1824-1880), a distinguished French physician, suggested that these opening were the result of an operation of trepanation and that the instrument employed was a flint scraper.

Broca suggested that survivors of operation were endowed with mythical powers and that, when they died, portions of their skull, especially those that included a part of the edge of the artificial opening, were in great demand as charms.

Following these discoveries, thousands of such specimens have been discovered from many parts of the world: the United Kingdom, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Poland, the Danube Basin, North Africa, Palestine, the Caucasus, all down the Western coastline of the Americas and especially in Peru, where more than 10,000 specimens have been excavated.
History of Surgery - Trephination of the skull