The Eye of Horus (originally, The Eye of Ra) is an ancient Egyptian symbol of protection and power, from the deity Horus or Ra
The Eye was a symbol that signified royal power, yet on the numeration side denoted a decimal system where round off was set to the first 6-terms. The ancients believed this symbol of indestructibility would assist in rebirth, due to their beliefs about the soul. The more recent tradition of freemasonry adopted the symbol in the form of the Eye of Providence and as such it has survived to this day, and appears as the Eye of Providence on the recto of the Great Seal of the United States. The Eye of Horus (flanked by Nekhbet and Wadjet) was found under the 12th layer of bandages on Tutankhamun's mummy.
Horus was an ancient god in Egyptian mythology who dramatically evolved over the whole of Egyptian history. Early on, he became identified as a sky god, where one of his eyes was the sun, and the other the moon. His weaker eye later became less important in his mythology, and he became more strongly aligned with the sun, particularly when the cult of Thoth, a moon god, arose. As the sun, or rather, with his eye as the sun, his eye had a special meaning, and became a symbol of power when combined with the hieratic aspects of the subject. Originally, Ra held this position, but as Horus gradually became more important, he transformed into a sun god, so Horus became thought of as Ra, or rather Ra-Herakhty ("Ra, who is Horus of the two horizons"). Later Horus-Eye numeration decreased in importance in Egyptian life, with hieratic, demotic and later improvements in Egyptian arithmetic solving the oldest Horus-Eye problem. The oldest Horus-Eye problem was to write any number, like one (1), exactly, without throwing away any piece of the number.
Mathematics
The shattering of Horus' eye into six pieces lead the Egyptians to use the Eye of Horus to calculate fractions within a decimal (fraction) numeration system. The ancient Egyptians used these six pieces to represent the six senses and each piece had a fractional value and were aware that a round off process was taking place, throwing out a piece of almost any number. The parts of the eye were divided as follows:
- The right side of the eye = 1/2 = smell
- The pupil = 1/4 = sight
- The eyebrow = 1/8 = thought
- The left side of the eye = 1/16 = hearing
- The curved tail = 1/32 = taste
- The leg = 1/64 = touch
The Egyptians could do fractions by quantitatively adding up parts, and later learned to write any vulgar fraction as first a Horus-Eye (quotient) and second an Egyptian fraction series as its remainder. If one were to do the math they would discover that the fractions, when added together, only equal 63/64, and thus, 1/64 had been thrown away This has been attributed to the ancient Egyptians belief in not being able to attain perfection but also the idea that the 1/64 that remains could be a form of magic that one would require to complete themselves. The Akhmim (Cairo) Wooden Tablet, written in 2,000 BCE, formally solved this problem by dividing a hekat unity, 64/64, by any number 3, 7, 10, 11 and 13, with the quotient being stated as Q/64 and its remainder as (5*R/n) times 1/320 (named ro). Generally, divisor n could reach but not exceed 64. When a divisor greater than 64 was needed, as the medical texts, P. Eber and others often required, another exact partitioning method of the volume measurement unit was implemented.
Source is www.wikipedia.org
