Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Eye of Horus, Unit fractions in Ancient Egypt, and Special Numbers!

Research on the significance of the Eye of Horus:

The Eye of Horus is a very packed symbol! Not only did each of the fractions 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, and 1/64 have denominators comprised of the first 6 powers of 2, they also represented Heqat fractions, which was an Egyptian measuring unit for grains and flour, and each of the fractions accounted for a different human sense. 1/2 accounted for the sense of smell, 1/4 for sight, 1/8 for thought, 1/16 for hearing, 1/32 for taste, and 1/64 for touch. I'm a bit curious as to why the fractions were allocated towards each sense as such; I would have expected that 'thought' would be paired with the largest fraction, 1/2, since it's deemed as the most important sense. One of the articles I read presented an insightful explanation as to why which fractions were paired with what sense, however, they concluded that their explanation was mere speculation that took Egyptian mastery of medicine, arts, and mysticism into consideration. After studying the Babylonian base 60 system, I find it really interesting that the Egyptians had a particular affinity to base 2. I'm surprised that the Heqat fractions didn't include 1/3 or 1/5, which I think would have been more practical as a measuring unit for grains and flour, than 1/32 or 1/64. However, I imagine that based on real-life situations of providing grains and flour for Egyptian communities, it might have been more convenient to have a base 2 system for rationing portions.

Ways in which numbers are connected to belief systems in my world:

Coming from an Islamic perspective, I'd have to consider the numbers 1, 3, 33, and 99. Islam is a monotheist religion and the last of the 3 Abrahamic Faiths. In Islamic tradition, God has 99 attributes, each with their own significance. This has some correlation to the way Muslims have a daily practice of remembering God through a form of meditation known as 'dhikr', and this process includes repeating 3 different phrases 33 times each (3 x 33 = 99). This is tallied by counting the 3 subsections of each finger on the right hand, cycling from the down the thumb and all the way to the pinky finger twice (15 x 2 = 30) and going down the thumb once more (30 + 3 = 33). In fact, there are many Islamic practices that occur in thirds, on a daily, weekly, monthly, and annual basis. The concept of parity is quite important here too, and the idea that God is one, consistently brings itself back up- each of these numbers is odd, which means that after pairing each value, 1 is exists by itself alone. But, there's a lot of overlap here between the Abrahamic faiths; Biblically and Judaically, the numbers 1, 3, and 33 also have respective significance.

(A complete digression that spun from the research done for this homework: I began to wonder if there was any correlation between the Pyramids and the Golden Ratio. Sure enough, it turns out that the Great Pyramid has some Golden Ratio proportions! I found this significant because I always associated the Golden Ratio with the Greeks, because it’s denoted with the greek letter phi. But what’s even more remarkable, is that the Egyptians could have worked with unit fraction or natural number approximations of phi, which is mind-blowing!)


Some resources to check out:

https://www.cureus.com/articles/19443-the-eye-of-horus-the-connection-between-art-medicine-and-mythology-in-ancient-egypt

http://www.spirasolaris.ca/Golden_Digressions.html

https://www.goldennumber.net/great-pyramid-giza-complex-golden-ratio/


2 comments:

  1. What a great musing on Bernoulli, spirals and phi! Thanks so much, Asiya. You haven't really touched much on the Eye of Horus, or on numbers that are significant to you though. Please do add these!

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