Mathematics Magazine for Grades 1-12  

The Egyptian Number System

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?

is the Ancient Egyptian way to write 2,563.