By Scientific Knowledge and money, people can build their kingdom
Ahmed Shawki
That was a true statement reflecting the splendor of the Ancient Egyptian Civilization. It was not by accident or by try and error that ancient Egyptians had built those magnificent monuments which started with the pyramids five thousand years ago. It is by profound scientific knowledge that has good evidence in the different mathematical papyri that we discovered that shows the deep knowledge in mathematics, geometry and calculations. The great pyramid of Giza itself witnesses deep knowledge of astronomy, geometry, mechanics, soil mechanics and physics. More over one can appreciate the mastering of managerial tools to orchestrate the work of twenty thousand workers for twenty years to build this pyramid.
As R. Gillings said in his book (Mathematics in the time of the Pharaohs)
“The brain power which is evinced by the building of the pyramids is in no way inferior to that of the great engineering of the present days”
“The Egyptians had attained all the essentials of a civilization as fully developed as our own as early as 3000 BC”
One of the main characters that played an important role in the ancient Egyptian civilization is the Scribe. The scribe symbolizes the knowledge, wisdom and documentation skill. He is the real source of information. It is because of him that we have now the most complete records about this magnificent civilization, whether through recording information on the walls of the tombs and temples, or through the writing of the papyri.
When we investigate the way the Ancient Egyptians manipulated there mathematics, one gets surprised by the great similarity between the mathematics that was used at the time of the pharaohs and the one used by the computer systems today.
We have only found six papyri addressing mathematics from the time of the pharaohs until now: Reisner papyrus, Moscow Mathematical papyrus (MMP) kahun papyrus, the Egyptian Mathematical Leather Roll papyrus, Rhind Mathematical papyrus (RMP) and Berlin papyrus. Each papyrus contains a series of problems and their solutions. The most known papyrus of them all is the Rhind Mathematical papyrus which is now on display at the British Museum. It contains 87 problems in addition to a table for the decomposition of two over odd numbers into unit fractions.
As Arnold Chace, the publisher of Rhind Mathematical Papyrus Said:
“I venture to suggest that if one were to ask for that single attribute of the human intellect which would most clearly indicate the degree of civilization of a race, the answer would be, the power of close reasoning, and that power could best be determined in a general way by the mathematical skill which members of the race displayed. Judged by this standard the Egyptians of the nineteenth century before Christ had a high degree of civilization”
