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The History of Mathematics

Egyptian Numbers and Mathematics

What type of numerals did the Egyptians use?

By about 3000 B.C.E., the Egyptians had a writing system based on hieroglyphs, or pictures that represented words. Their numerals were also based on hieroglyphs. They used a base 10 system of numerals: One unit, one ten, one hundred, and so on to one million. The main drawback to this system was the number of symbols needed to define the numbers.