The Egyptian Number System was the worlds first base 10 number system. This means that much like our number system, it has 10 symbols or “base symbols,” that then repeat after 10 digits. However, similar to roman numerals, there is ONLY symbols for 1,10,100,1000,10000,100000,1000000.

These base numbers in their simple Hieroglyphic form, are simply drawn next to each other, starting from largest to smallest, to represent digits other than the ones that are base ten.

As you can see, for the number 276, there are two “100” symbols, followed by seven “10” symbols, and finally six “1” symbols.

The number 4622 is show, and it demonstrates that this rather inefficient way of representing specific numbers, applies to them all, no matter how large. the same process is always used.

An interesting thing about the Egyptian Number system is that there were no zero or digits involved. While there was a word for zero, called “nfr” or “nefer” meaning “depletion,” there was no use in the number system, only a hieroglyph, mainly used when referring to money.

Whilst there were no decimals or a zero, there were in fact fractions, however, they where very simple, and used a symbol representing a mouth, as shown, placed over the existing number, to symbolize 1/number.