Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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My first introduction to ancient Egypt happened in London.

This may sound strange, but I always found that I learnt more about my country when I was abroad, especially in England. I can see two reasons for this: first, the existence of what Richards calls artistic distance both in space and in time; and secondly, because of the innumerable books written by Englishmen about Egypt, ancient Egypt in particular.

One book which really enlightened me was The Legacy of Egypt, which was edited by SRK Granville and was written by a number of well-chosen Egyptologists; it was published by Oxford University Press. Every chapter reflected love, understanding and genuine interest in our ancient history.

I was particularly interested in the chapter about the legacy of Egypt to science, written by RW Sloley. Sloley presents his thesis, which is that the West wrongly attributes the emergence and development of science to the Greeks. They forget the debt Greece owed to Egypt, a debt the Greeks themselves acknowledge in no uncertain terms. Thales and many others under him were profoundly impressed and stimulated by the Egyptian civilisation and knowledge.

Astronomy was one of the most developed sciences in Egypt. According to this writer star diagrams were made at a very early date, with the stars grouped in constellations according to a fancied resemblance to some animate or inanimate form. Some of the star diagrams can still be seen on the ceilings of temples and tombs. It was the ancient Egyptians who invented the calendar.

The ancient Egyptians divided the day into 24 hours, 12 of day and 12 of night. Observations of the stars were made by a simple sighting instrument, as an indicator for determining the commencement of a festival and placing all men in their hours. Some of the diagrams in the paintings of the 20th Dynasty (BC 1200) attempt to show the positions of the stars during the 12 hours of the night at intervals of 15 days. This instrument was also used for aligning the axis of a temple in the ceremony observed during the laying of foundation stones. The hours of the night were determined by water clocks especially used when the stars were not visible. The oldest water clock dates from about BC 1300. The water clock, later called by the Greeks the Clepsydra, took the form of a vessel shaped like a flower pot. In use it was filled with water to a certain mark. The water flowed out through a small opening near the base. On the interior surface a series of marks corresponding to the water level at the various hours of the night indicated the hours. Those hours were not of uniform lengths but in the absence of regularly moving mechanisms, irregularities were probably not noticed.

The hours of the day were determined by simple shadow clocks, which are still used in some countries. Observations of the directions of shadows during the daytime as well as observations of the night sky enabled early observers to acquire a sense of direction and to mark the meridian dividing the period of daylight conveniently into morning and afternoon. The orientation of the faces of the Great Pyramid to the cardinal points of the compass to a very high degree of accuracy bear testimony to the exact observation of transits of stars across the meridian.

Sloley concludes that mathematical knowledge in ancient Egypt was essentially practical in character and must have developed as the occasion arose in dealing with problems encountered in daily life. As a believer in ancient Egyptian civilisation, he deplores the custom of many writers to emphasise what Egyptians did not achieve rather than what they accomplished. The Egyptian, he says, has not always been given credit of what he did. Before BC 2000, he says, he had developed a practical system of numerals and could carry out mathematical calculations with ease. He could solve mathematical problems, he had notions of mathematical as well as geometric progression, and he was familiar with the properties of rectangles, triangles, circles and pyramids.

And this Egypt did all by herself: "There is no evidence that the early Egyptians owed anything to other sources."