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Epoques
Egyptian sciences
© Jean-Luc CHAPPAZ. Conservateur aux Musées d'Art et d'Histoire de Genève
Clepsydra discovered in Karnak
Museum of Cairo
In Egypt, the scribes and all those which can write are highly considered for the very practical character of such a knowledge. Generally, the Egyptians are not carried to the abstracted reflection, like will be later the Greeks. They are practical men and of experiment: their scientific research consists in finding and consigning “receipts” sure and tested to re-use them rather than to work out general mathematical laws explaining the empirically discovered “easy ways”. The Egyptians are thus more of the technicians that scientists, even if, by considering their imposing monuments, one lends very wide and final knowledge to them: actually, the architects frequently modified their plans according to the risks of construction.
Measurements of longor
At these bureaucratic people, the measurement lengths is fundamental for the employees of the land register, the scribes of the fields and the architects. The unit of reference the is bent royal one which measures 52.3 centimetres. The Egyptian system of measurement was not decimal.
Medicine
Treaties of medicine on papyrus teach us that the doctors applied more found methods than they did not understand the causes of the diseases. Certain methods resembled receipts of charlatan, like the “remedy to make push the hair of a bald person”. The Imhotep scientist, with the service of king Djoser, will be venerated centuries after his death like a god of medicine.
Measurements of weight
That which was longest used was the “deben”, of approximately 90 G; one made use of it for the weighings of balances with plague.
The measurement of time
The clepsydra, or clock with water, is filled with water to the sunset. Water runs out slowly thanks to a small opening spared with the bottom of the vase. When the level of water reaches the first graduation of the interior of the vase, the second hour of the night starts. Twelve columns of graduations correspond to the unequalled durations of the nights according to the month.
Time
This astronomical and religious calendar gives a division of the year in three seasons: akhet, the flood; peret, the time of the cultures and the harvests; chemou, the hot season and dries. Each season understands four months, writings “month L”, “Month II”, etc. Below each month, characters represent stars and the planets which appear in the sky at that time. The year starts in the middle of the table, the first day of the first month akhet: the goddess in the boat is the star Sothis (Sirius) which reappears this morning in the east. Under Sothis the constellations of North, visible are presented all the year. In the line of bottom, Ramsès II adores twelve divinities, for each month of the year.
Mental arithmetic
The organization of the intendance, which managed the provisioning in the large building sites as in the fields, asked for good concepts of practical mathematics, as these minor problems consigned on papyrus indicate it. “Distribution of 100 breads between 10 men, of which a sailor, a foreman and a guard who must receive the double of the others. It is necessary to make the addition of the shares: 13; to divide by 13 100 breads. Result: 7 2/3 + 1/39, it is the ration of the 7 men, and the sailor, the foreman and the guard will have the double.
The Egyptians were unaware of the multiplication tables, except the table of 2. Here how they multiplied 7 X 12: 7=4+2+1; they thus added: (4 X 12) + (2 X 12) + 12 = 48 + 24 + 12 = 84. The Egyptians used the fractions continuously, primarily those with numerator 1.
 Learn more... Old Egypt
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