Numeration

Around 3000 B.C. Pharaohs began writing numerals for the first time. Egyptians carved their numerals in stone with a hammer and chisel. They also used the brush tip of a reed to paint them on shards of stone or hardened clay.

Egyptians used a decimal based system, a system with a base of ten. 1 is a vertical line or picture of a staff, 10 is a heel-bone sign, 100 is a coiled rope, 1,000 is a lotus blossom, 10,000 is a bent finger, 100,000 is a tadpole, 1,000,000 is a kneeling genie with raised arms. The numeral notation was brought up by the representation of standard objects or tokens (pebbles, shells, pellets, sticks, discs, rings, etc.).