Study in Egyptian Fractions
1 STUDY IN EGYPTIAN FRACTIONS Robert P. Schneider Whether operating with fingers, stones or hieroglyphic symbols, the ancient mathematician would have been in many respects as familiar with the integers and rational numbers as is the modern researcher. If we regard both written symbols and unwritten arrangements of objects to be forms of notation for numbers, then through the ancient notations and their related number systems flowed the same arithmetic properties—associativity, commutativity, distributivity—that we know so intimately today, having probed and extended these empirical laws using modern tools such as set theory and Peano’s axioms. It is fascinating to contemplate that we share our base-ten number system and its arithmetic, almost as natural to us as sunlight and the air we breathe, with the scribes of ancient Egypt [1, p. 85]. We use different symbols to denote the numbers and operations, but our arithmetic was theirs as well. Our notation for fractions even mimics theirs with its two-tiered arrangement foreshadowing our numerator and denominator; however, the Egyptian notation for fractions leaves no space for numbers in the numerator, the position being filled by a hieroglyphic symbol meaning “part” [1, p. 93]. Aside from having special symbols to denote 2/3 and 3/4, the Egyptians always understood the numerator to be equal to unity in their fractions [4]. The representation of an improper fraction as the sum of distinct unit fractions, or fractions having numerators equal to one, is referred to as an “Egyptian fraction” [3]. I found the Egyptians’ use of fractions, as well as their multiplication and division algorithms [1, pp.
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