Egyptian Fractions
When the Ancient
Egyptians divided up land as an inheritance, they used what we now call
‘unitary’ fractions -
etc
- to do so.
So,
for example,
wasn’t
thought of as being ‘3 lots of one quarter’, but rather as ‘
’
Someone who owned three quarters of a field simply owned a half of it and a further quarter.
They always used the
largest ‘unitary’ fraction possible before adding on whatever extra bit was
needed. So, no repetitions like
or
.
Now, some fractions are
simple to express in this way, and others are more complex:
and 
whereas
The Problem:
A nice group of fractions
to describe in Egyptian terms are those with a ‘numerator’ of 2 …
Try rewriting
in
Egyptian style.
fairly
quickly !
Open the File as a Word Document