Wednesday, October 21, 2020

The Eye of Horus and Its Significance in Ancient Egypt


I felt that the above diagram was very helpful to explain the Eye of Horus and its significance with unitary fractions.  Each of the "sacred unit fractions" were attributed to six parts of the eye of the god Horus. These fractions, all with powers of two in their denominators, were used to represent the fractions of hekat, which is the unit measure of capacity for grains. The most interesting aspect of the story for me was that according to legend, the pieces were lost in a battle and were restored by the god Thoth. 

For special numbers in my life the closest I can relate to is my hockey number. I wear the number 8 because my birthday is February 8, 1998 and my favourite player growing up was Alexander Ovechkin who also wears the number 8. 

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1 comment:

  1. Susan GerofskyOctober 21, 2020 at 1:42 PM

    Nice work on the Eye of Horus, Brock! And you're not the only one in our class who liked 8 for that reason...

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