1 10 100 1,000 10,000 100,000 "Many", also 1,000,000

     Many of us may recall learning how to add and subtract in our elementary school years with popsicle sticks or the like. That or we may have used the method to teach children ourselves. For those of you who haven't heard of "the popsicle stick method", the basic idea is that one popsicle stick equals '1', a group of five popsicle sticks represents '5', and so on. When you get at least ten popsicle sticks, you bundle the ten together (with a rubber band or string) and move the grouping to a different pile and call each grouping a '10', or a value of '1' in the ten's place. When you have ten of these, you bundle them together and move it to yet another pile where every grouping stands for a value of '1' in the hundred's place.

     Well, in most systems nowadays we use groups of 10, and in ancient Egypt they did the same, except they didn't write 1, 2, 3, 4, 25, 136, 256, 65536, or anything like that, they actually drew out the popsicle sticks and the bundles. Just look at the chart in the upper right-hand corner there. That symbol for '1' is a popsicle stick. I don't know where Egyptians found their popsicle sticks way back then, but here we have solid archeological evidence that they had 'em.

     The ancient egyptians would draw out up to 9 of these popsicle sticks, but for every 10 they had they would draw out that next symbol. The symbol for one million popsicle sticks was a picture of a guy with his hands up in the air. Now, the Egyptologists will tell you it's a picture of a god holding up the world, but I don't think so; I think that guy's sick of bundling popsicle sticks.

Examples:

1 2 3 4 25 136 256 65,536 1,100,001

It's important to note that these example numbers are written out to be read from left to right. (Which, of course, wasn't the norm in Egyptian Hieroglyphic writing.) The order of the glyphs, as well as the direction they are facing would be the opposite in writing from right to left.