Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Eye of Horus and Unit Fractions

The Eye of Horus was thought of to be used as one divided by the first six powers of two: 

The right side of the eye = ​12
The pupil = ​14
The eyebrow = ​18
The left side of the eye = ​116
The curved tail = ​132
The teardrop = ​164


What is most interesting to me about this is that the fractions were used by the Egyptians to represent the Heqat fractions which were utilized to measure flour and grain. What is even more interesting is what each fraction represents. The 1/2 accounts for the sense of smell, the 1/4 represents sight, the 1/8 represents thought, the 1/16 represents hearing, the 1/32 represents taste, and the 1/64 represents touch. 

Although I personally don't have a connection to these numbers, but what is quite interesting is that these fractions are the apart of an elementary example of an infinite geometric series that converges absolutely. In which the sum of this geometric series converges to 1. I am unsure if this has any relation to the Egyptian's development of these fractions, however, I believe that this is an interesting example of how the roots of mathematics can influence further developments. 

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

1 comment:

  1. Dylan, I appreciate your speculation about the historical events in the development of the concept of an infinite series.

    ReplyDelete

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