Number Recording of the Egyptians and Greeks

 Number Recording of the Egyptians

and Greeks

The History of Herodotus

The writing of history, as we understand it,

is a Greek invention; and foremost among the

early Greek historians was Herodotus. Herodotus

(circa 485–430 B.C.) was born at Halicarnassus, a

largely Greek settlement on the southwest coast

of Asia Minor. In early life, he was involved in

political troubles in his home city and forced to ee in exile to the island of Samos, and

thence to Athens. From there Herodotus set out on travels whose leisurely character and 

broad extent indicate that they occupied many years. It is assumed that he made three

principal journeys, perhaps as a merchant, collecting material and recording his impres-

sions. In the Black Sea, he sailed all the way up the west coast to the Greek communities

at the mouth of the Dnieper River, in what is now Ukraine, and then along the south

coast to the foot of the Caucasus. In Asia Minor, he traversed modern Syria and Iraq

and traveled down the Euphrates, possibly as far as Babylon. In Egypt, he ascended the

Nile River from its delta to somewhere near Aswan, exploring the pyramids along the

way. Around 443 B.C., Herodotus became a citizen of Thurium in southern Italy, a new

colony planted under Athenian auspices. In Thurium, he seems to have passed the last

years of his life involved almost entirely in nishing the History of Herodotus, a book

larger than any Greek prose work before it. The reputation of Herodotus as a historian

stood high even in his own day. In the absence of numerous copies of books, it is natural

that a history, like other literary compositions, should have been read aloud at public

and private gatherings. In Athens, some 20 years before his death, Herodotus recited

completed portions of his History to admiring audiences and, we are told, was voted an

unprecedentedly large sum of public money in recognition of the merit of his work.

Although the story of the Persian Wars provides the connecting link in the History of

Herodotus, the work is no mere chronicle of carefully recorded events. Almost anything

that concerned people interested Herodotus, and his History is a vast store of information

on all manner of details of daily life. He contrived to set before his compatriots a general

picture of the known world, of its various peoples, of their lands and cities, and of what

they did and above all why they did it. (A modern historian would probably describe the

History as a guidebook containing useful sociological and anthropological data, instead

of a work of history.) The object of his History, as Herodotus conceived it, required

him to tell all he had heard but not necessarily to accept it all as fact. He atly stated,

“My job is to report what people say, not to believe it all, and this principle is meant

to apply to my whole work.” We nd him, accordingly, giving the traditional account

of an occurrence and then offering his own interpretation or a contradictory one from a

different source, leaving the reader to choose between versions. One point must be clear:

Herodotus interpreted the state of the world at his time as a result of change in the past

and felt that the change could be described. It is this attempt that earned for him, and

not any of the earlier writers of prose, the honorable title “Father of History.”

Herodotus took the trouble to describe Egypt at great length, for he seems to have

been more enthusiastic about the Egyptians than about almost any other people that he

met. Like most visitors to Egypt, he was distinctly aware of the exceptional nature of the

climate and the topography along the Nile: “For anyone who sees Egypt, without having

heard a word about it before, must perceive that Egypt is an acquired country, the gift

of the river.” This famous passage—often paraphrased to read “Egypt is the gift of the

Nile”—aptly sums up the great geographical fact about the country. In that sun-soaked,

rainless climate, the river in over owing its banks each year regularly deposited the rich

silt washed down from the East African highlands. To the extreme limits of the river’s

waters there were fertile elds for crops and the pasturage of animals; and beyond that

the barren desert frontiers stretched in all directions. This was the setting in which that

literate, complex society known as Egyptian civilization developed.

The emergence of one of the world’s earliest cultures was essentially a political act.

Between 3500 and 3100 B.C., the self-suf cient agricultural communities that clung to

the strip of land bordering the Nile had gradually coalesced into larger units until there 

were only the two kingdoms of Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt. Then, about 3100 B.C.,

these regions were united by military conquest from the south by a ruler named Menes, an

elusive gure who stepped forth into history to head the long line of pharaohs. Protected

from external invasion by the same deserts that isolated her, Egypt was able to develop

the most stable and longest-lasting of the ancient civilizations. Whereas Greece and

Rome counted their supremacies by the century, Egypt counted hers by the millennium;

a well-ordered succession of 32 dynasties stretched from the uni cation of the Upper

and Lower Kingdoms by Menes to Cleopatra’s encounter with the asp in 31 B.C. Long

after the apogee of Ancient Egypt, Napoleon was able to exhort his weary veterans with

the glory of its past. Standing in the shadow of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, he cried,

“Soldiers, forty centuries are looking down upon you!”

Hieroglyphic Representation of Numbers

As soon as the uni cation of Egypt under a single leader became an accomplished

fact, a powerful and extensive administrative system began to evolve. The census had

to be taken, taxes imposed, an army maintained, and so forth, all of which required

reckoning with relatively large numbers. (One of the years of the Second Dynasty was

named Year of the Occurrence of the Numbering of all Large and Small Cattle of the

North and South.) As early as 3500 B.C., the Egyptians had a fully developed number

system that would allow counting to continue inde nitely with only the introduction from

time to time of a new symbol. This is borne out by the macehead of King Narmer, one of

the most remarkable relics of the ancient world, now in a museum at Oxford University.

Near the beginning of the dynastic age, Narmer (who, some authorities suppose, may have

been the legendary Menes, the rst ruler of the united Egyptian nation) was obliged to

punish the rebellious Libyans in the western Delta. He left in the temple at Hierakonpolis

a magni cent slate palette—the famous Narmer Palette—and a ceremonial macehead,

both of which bear scenes testifying to his victory. The macehead preserves forever the

of cial record of the king’s accomplishment, for the inscription boasts of the taking of

120,000 prisoners and a register of captive animals, 400,000 oxen and 1,422,000 goats.

Another example of the recording of very large numbers at an early stage occurs in

the Book of the Dead, a collection of religious and magical texts whose principle aim was

to secure for the deceased a satisfactory afterlife. In one section, which is believed to date

from the First Dynasty, we read (the Egyptian god Nu is speaking): “I work for you, o ye

spirits, we are in number four millions, six hundred and one thousand, and two hundred.”

The spectacular emergence of the Egyptian government and administration under

the pharaohs of the rst two dynasties could not have taken place without a method of

writing, and we nd such a method both in the elaborate “sacred signs,” or hieroglyphics,

and in the rapid cursive hand of the accounting scribe. The hieroglyphic system of writing

is a picture script, in which each character represents a concrete object, the signi cance

of which may still be recognizable in many cases. In one of the tombs near the Pyramid

Although the Egyptians had symbols for numbers, they had no generally uniform nota-

tion for arithmetical operations. In the case of the famous Rhind Papyrus (dating about

1650 B.C.), the scribe did represent addition and subtraction by the hieroglyphs and

, which resemble the legs of a person coming and going.