Digits and Numbers
the following hieroglyphics were used to denote powers of ten:
| Value | 1 | 10 | 100 | 1,000 | 10,000 | 100,000 | 1 million, or many |
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| Hieroglyph |
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or
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| Description | Single stroke | Heel bone | Coil of rope | Water lily (also called Lotus) |
Bent Finger | Tadpole or Frog |
Man with both hands raised, perhaps Heh. |
Multiples of these values were expressed by repeating the symbol as many times as needed. For instance, a stone carving from Karnak shows the number 4622 as
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Egyptian hieroglyphs could be written in both directions (and even vertically). This example is written left-to-right and top-down; on the original stone carving, it is right-to-left, and the signs are thus reversed
Read more about this topic: Egyptian Numerals
Famous quotes containing the word numbers:
“What culture lacks is the taste for anonymous, innumerable germination. Culture is smitten with counting and measuring; it feels out of place and uncomfortable with the innumerable; its efforts tend, on the contrary, to limit the numbers in all domains; it tries to count on its fingers.”
—Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985)