Essay on Impact of Ancient Egypt

Between the period, of 5000 B.C to 332 B.C there once was an advanced civilization that we call ancient Egypt. The ancient Egyptians created their language, mathematics, trading, government, architecture, and other systems and principles. Two of the main things this essay is going to focus on are the numeral and time-telling systems of ancient Egypt. Their numeral and time-telling system has its disadvantages and advantages compared to the present-day Roman numeral and time-telling systems. The Egyptians also have similarities and differences to the present-day and Roman numeral and time-telling systems. Some features of today's time-telling system have evolved from the Egyptian's way of telling time. These are the topics this essay will focus on.

The ancient Egyptian numeral system has similarities and differences with the Hindu-Arabic numeral system (which is the numeral system humans use today) and the Roman numeral system. The ancient Egyptian and Hindu-Arabic numeral system has a standard way of writing fractions while the Roman numeral system does not. To write fractions the Egyptians use something called Horus’s eye and each part of the eye describes the fraction. The right side of the is equal to ½, the pupil is equal to ¼, the eyebrow is equal to ⅛, the left side of the eye is equal to 1/16, the curve tail is equal to 1/32, and finally the teardrop is equal to 1/64. To write a fraction in the Hindu-Arabic numeral system you have to put a vinculum (which is the line that separates the numerator and denominator) then put a number above the vinculum which is the numerator then the number at the bottom which is called the denominator. To write a fraction in the Roman numeral system you just write out the fraction like “tres octave” which is 3/8. The Egyptians and the Romans have the same amount of symbols in their numeral system, which is seven, while the Hindu-Arabic numeral system has more; more specifically 10. The Egyptian's number symbols are that a single stroke is equal to one, a drawing of a hobble for cattle is equal to ten, a coil of rope is equal to 100, a drawing of a lotus plant is equal to 1,000, a drawing of a human finger is equal to 10,000, a drawing of a frog or tadpole is equal to 100,000, and finally a drawing of a god raising his hands above his head is equal to 1,000,000. The symbols of the Roman numeral system are I which is one, V for five, X for ten, L for 50, D for 500, and finally M for 1,000. The Hindu-Arabic numeral system symbols are 1 which is equal to one, 2 which is equal to two, 3, which is equal to three, 4 which is equal to four, 5 which is equal to five, 6 which is equal to six, 7 which is equal to seven, 8 which is equal to eight, 9 which is equal to nine, and 0 which is equal to zero.

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The ancient Egyptian numeral system has advantages and disadvantages compared to the Hindu-Arabic and Roman numeral systems. The advantages of the ancient Egyptian numeral system compared to the Hindu-Arabic and Roman numeral systems are that the additive methods make finding sums easy, the base system is based on tens so modern people can understand it easily, and the symbols of each power are very distinguishable compared to one another. Also, there is less control so place value does not matter. The disadvantages of the ancient Egyptian numeral system are that it does not have any multiplicative shortcuts, that it takes too much space, that it takes up a lot of time to write out, and that there is a limitation of fractions since the Egyptian fraction system only goes by ¾. The advantages of the Roman numeral system are that it has checkpoints and it is good for making things look formal. The disadvantages of the Roman numeral system are that there is no zero, there are no fractions, it is very confusing to distinguish them from numbers and letters, and multiplication and division is very difficult. The advantages of the Hindu-Arabic system are that it has fractions, it has zero, it has ten distinct digits, adding is easy, subtracting, is easy, multiplication is easy, division is easy, and you can do very complex math.

The ancient Egyptian time-telling system has its similarities and differences compared to how humans tell time now. Ancient Egyptian clocks were made out of stone while modern clocks are made of plastic, metals, or completely digitalized. The ancient Egyptians tell time by sundial/shadow clock. So basically in ancient Egypt, there were these big, tall stone pillars called obelisks and this huge obelisks cast shadows on the ground. So the ancient Egyptians used the shadows of the obelisk to tell the time of day. The ancient Egyptians also had water clocks that tell time by the gradual flow of water in or of a vessel. There are two types of water clocks inflow and outflow and the ancient Egyptians used outflow. While the humans of the present day tell time mainly by the atomic clock we also use quartz clocks. The atomic clock is the most accurate in the world right now. It tells time by the time it takes a Cesium-133 atom at the ground state to oscillate exactly 9,192,631,770 times which is equal to one second. The quartz clock is very accurate. The quartz clock is used in wristwatches, cellphones, radios, and computers, and they are also in measuring equipment. It tells time by a battery sending electricity to the quartz crystal. The quartz crystal will vibrate back and forth at a precise frequency of 32768 times each second. The ancient Egyptians and the present-day time-telling systems both have hours in their systems. The ancient Egyptians had months which were 3 weeks and each week was 10 days long while the present time-telling system also had months but each month has 4 weeks and 2 days or 4 weeks and 3 days depending on the month has 30 or 31 days. February is the only exception which is exactly 4 weeks or 4 weeks and 1 day if it’s a leap year). Later on, the ancient Egyptians made a civil calendar which has 12 months and each month has 30 days. One day is equal to 24 hours There are 360 days in a year. The months had alternative names that seemed to echo some type of lunar reckoning. The year is divided into three seasons the Inundation (Akhet), Emergence (Peret), and Harvest (Shemu) and each has 4 months with 5 days outside the regular 12 months that tag at the end of the year. This sounds very similar to the Gregorian Calendar which is the calendar that most humans use today. The only differences the Gregorian Calendar has are that it has 365.25 days, the months have irregular lengths, every four years there's an intercalary day added to February which makes that year 366 days long, and there are 7 days in a week each with its name. Their names are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Internationally a week begins on Monday while in other countries like the U.S. and Canada, the week begins on Sunday.

The ancient Egyptians' time-telling system has advantages and disadvantages compared to the present-day time-telling. The advantage of the ancient Egyptian time-telling system is that you can make a sundial in the wild with the simplest material in the wild. Just place a tall stone in an open field and label the ground around the large stone with a small stone and now you can tell what time of day it is. You can tell what day of the week and month it is by just looking at the sky since the calendar is lunar-based so whatever shape the moon is the day of the week the temperature outside or the location of the stars you can tell what month or season it is. It does not hurt the environment since it does not use fossil fuels to fuel it or is not made of plastics or metals. Just made out of natural resources you can probably be in any forest or desert. You can survive in the wild while using it. The disadvantages of the ancient Egyptian time-telling system are that it is not the most accurate, is not portable, and only works if the sun is out or not blocked by a bunch of clouds unless you are using a water clock but it is not very accurate. The advantage of the present time-telling system is that it is the most accurate time-telling in the world (the atomic clock and the Gregorian calendar are the second most accurate in the world; the Revised Julian Calendar is the most accurate). It works any time no matter if it's day or night or the weather outside. It's very portable (we just tell what it is just by a quick look at the wrist watch or just taking your phone out of your pocket and just looking at the home screen of your phone and you can tell what time of day it is, what the day of the week it is, what month it is, and what year it is). The disadvantages of present-day time-telling are that uses a lot of natural resources and manmade resources, it is bad for the environment since all the ways humans tell time now are digitized. Digitalize things are mainly powered by fossil fuels (unless it is powered by a battery that uses chemical reactions or solar-powered) and fossil fuels release a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which will cause the average climate of planet Earth to increase and destroy the ozone layer which protects us from harmful UV rays from the sun. It also takes a lot of management to keep the atomic clock going. The Gregorian Calendar is one day off every 3236 years. The Revised Julian Calendar is one day off every 31,250 years.

Some elements of ancient Egyptian numeral and time-telling systems have been implemented and evolved in the present numeral and time-telling systems.

The ancient Egyptians are a very advanced society. They made their numeral system and time-telling system. Their numeral system has its similarities and differences compared to the Hindu-Arabic and Roman numeral systems. Their numeral system has its advantages and disadvantages compared to the Hindu-Arabic and Roman numeral systems. Their time-telling system has their similarities and differences to the present-day time-telling system. Their time-telling system has its advantages and disadvantages compared to the present-day time-telling. Some elements of their numeral and time-telling system have been implemented to the present time-telling system.