Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
OK, very briefly then:
Years were numbered starting from 1 for the reign of each new king. There were three seasons reflecting the agricultural year: "akhet" ("inundation", when the Nile flooded), "peret" ("growing", when crops were grown), and "shemu" ("harvest").
Each season had 4 months of 30 days each, divided into three 10-day weeks.
That makes 360 days, so to make the year up to the correct 365 days, there were 5 extra days at the end of the year which were not in any month.
Dates were written as the "regnal year" of the king, followed in turn by month number, season, and day number, so a date would be something like "year 15, 3rd month of harvest, day 8".
As you rightly say, numbers themselves were written a little like Roman numerals, on a decimal system, so there were symbols for 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10,000 and 100,000, and you just repeated each symbol the appropriate number of times. There was also a method of expressing fractions, which was rather complex and I won't go into it.
Hope that helps,
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Cool, cheers.
If I recall correctly all fractions were 1/n and additive, with different symbols than the normal numbers, seem to remember the Egyptian eye glyph being the key to remembering the various bits.
Did they name the Pharaoh with the year, or is it just really hard to timeline any writings?
Ages since I read anything on Egyptology and I suspect some of my understandings may have got a bit confused over the years (personally I blame Stargate SG-1).