The Number System in Abraham's Day

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                 

The artists used profiles just like Egyptians did, but so different. 

        Egyptian pharaoh, nose, ears, eyes different: was he a Hyksos?  

Historians believe numbers and counting expanded beyond one around 4,000 B.C. which is 6,023 years ago,  in Sumeria, which was located in southern Mesopotamia in what is now southern Iraq. One of the first civilizations to feature cities that were centers of trade, the people of Sumeria needed new methods of counting and record-keeping. 

  Abraham of the Bible was born in the 2nd millennium BCE which was about 1948 BCE--which was 3,971 years ago-or rounded out to 4,000 years ago, way after Sumeria had their system. Abraham was from Ur, near the Euphrates River's emptying into the Persian Gulf. 

    Market place for trading 

Sexagesimal, also known as base 60 or sexagenary, is a numeral system with sixty as its base. It originated with the ancient Sumerians in the 3rd millennium BC, was passed down to the ancient Babylonians, and is still used—in a modified form—for measuring time, angles, and geographic coordinates.                        

The number 60, a superior highly composite number, has twelve factors, namely 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, and 60, of which 2, 3, and 5 are prime numbers. With so many factors, many fractions involving sexagesimal numbers are simplified. For example, one hour can be divided evenly into sections of 30 minutes, 20 minutes, 15 minutes, 12 minutes, 10 minutes, 6 minutes, 5 minutes, 4 minutes, 3 minutes, 2 minutes, and 1 minute. 60 is the smallest number that is divisible by every number from 1 to 6; that is, it is the lowest common multiple of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. 

The Hollywood female of 34-24-34 ratio evidently was admired then as it was in the 1940s.           

Abraham was born in about 1948 BCE, probably just as the Akkadian Empire-formerly known as Assyrian was at its zenith in 2300 BCE.  They spoke a Semitic language.  Amurru was an Amorite kingdom established c. 2000 BCE, in a region spanning present-day western and north-western Syria and northern Lebanon.

Cuniforms found in Assyria, the 1st people to use Akkadian in writing.  Akkadian was spoken from the 4th millennium BCE and served as the language of diplomacy and commerce throughout the Near East until the Greek conquest.  Akkadian resembles Hebrew and Aramaic in structure, phonology and vocabulary but differs from them in the derived forms of its verbs, tenses, syntax and that its gutturals lost their distinctive character.  

This map shows not only Sumer with the city of Ur, but it shows the Egyptian Nile River Delta of Goshen where Jacob and his family of 70 were given to reside .  Notice that the city of Jericho belonged to the Akkadian Empire at the time, with its wall going back to the Neolithic Period (5000 BCE), inhabited throughout Chalcolithic and Canaanite times until destroyed by Joshua (Josh.6).  It was revived during the reign of King Ahab about 870 BCE by Hiel the Bethelite (I Kings 16:34).  

While new numbers and counting systems were being developed in Sumeria, so were the basics of arithmetic and writing. Keeping track of goods being traded required writing and basic addition and subtraction in addition to an expanded number and counting system.

Eventually, numbers were necessary for more than simply counting things. We can thank the ancient Egyptians for making the leap from using numbers to count to using them to measure things. Historians believe their use of numbers for measurement allowed the ancient Egyptians to build the pyramids and lay the foundation for advanced mathematics concepts, such as geometry.  

The Egyptians had a base 10 system of hieroglyphs for numerals. This means that they had separate symbols for one unit, one ten, one hundred, one thousand, one ten thousand, one hundred thousand, and one million.

The following hieroglyphs were used to denote powers of ten:

Value	1	10	100	1,000	10,000	100,000	1 million, or many
Hieroglyph
Gardiner's sign list ID	Z1	V20	V1	M12	D50	I8	C11
Description	Single stroke	Cattle hobble	Coil of rope	Water lily (also called lotus)	Bent finger	Tadpole	Heh[3]

                                                         

Hindu-Arabic numerals, set of 10 symbols—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0—that represent numbers in the decimal number system. They originated in India in the 6th or 7th century and were introduced to Europe through the writings of Middle Eastern mathematicians, especially al-Khwarizmi and al-Kindi, about the 12th century.          

Again, Jews used a lunar calendar dependent on the moon, while others today use the solar calendar dependent on the sun, making our times a little different.   By Jewish time, this is the year of 5783 covering 2022-2023 used by everyone else.  Jews use the Jewish calendar to determine Jewish holiday dates.   The Jewish calendar is the structure upon which all Jewish holidays are based. The High Holidays, Sukkot, Chanukah, Purim, Passover and Shavuot are always celebrated on their specific dates on the Jewish calendar. (For example, Rosh Hashanah is always celebrated on 1–2 Tishrei, and Passover always begins on 15 Nisan.)                          

                                                                       

  My calendar shows April as Nisan/Iyar.  Snow fell in higher places this morning; unbelievable!  April is the month for showers.  That's so that May will bring flowers.  

                                                        

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numeral_system

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hindu-Arabic-numerals

https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/guestid/robertson/UserFiles/File/Culture_in_Math/Egyptian_Number_System_and_Bingo.pdf

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/4624325/jewish/17-Jewish-Calendar-Facts.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amurru_kingdom