Unit 7 End of Unit Activity

Unit 7: Pythagoras and the world as numbers

Lesson 1: Pupil Resource Sheet 1 How did mummies do maths?

Mummies didn’t do a lot of maths – dead people don’t - but most people do when they’re alive. It would be hard to get along without numbers. Counting, for instance – how would you be able to tell someone how old you are? How many kittens your cat has just had? How many players in a rugby team? How many hours till dinner time? How much pocket-money you are owed? The Ancient Egyptians were some of the first people in the world to develop a system of counting numbers.

This is their sign for 1: l

This is their sign for 10: η

So this is how they wrote 28: llllllll η η

All very useful for counting canopic jars, pyramid building blocks and river hippos! It’s hard to get by without measuring things too.

In Ancient Egypt, your body came in very useful for measuring – you just used it like a ruler!

The width of four fingers was a palm. The length of an arm from finger-tip to elbow was a cubit. Seven palms were supposed to equal one cubit.

Measure the width of four fingers. This is your palm. Now draw the length of your arm from finger-tip to elbow on a piece of paper. How many of your palms can you fit along it? Exactly seven – or not?

Oh dear! Not exactly accurate. Who would you send out to buy four cubits of papyrus paper? Not the smallest person in the family for sure! So the Egyptians invented a standard length – the Royal Cubit. Now they could buy measuring sticks 1 cubit long (about 52 cms in our metric system) and could start building those amazing pyramids. They used cords 100 Royal Cubits long for their measurements.

Can you believe that the greatest mistake they made when building the great Pyramid was to make one of the 230 metre-long sides just 20 cms too long!

Science and Religion in Primary Schools Unit 7: Pythagoras and the world as numbers