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Did the Greeks Borrow Numeric System from Egypt?
Conventional wisdom has been that the Greeks devised a pioneering counting system, which basically underlies today's numerical system, which aided Greek math mathematicians such as Archimedes and Euclid in their work.
Dr. Stephen Chrisomalis of McGill university in Montreal, Canada, theorizes in an article appearing in the journal Antiquity that the Greeks in fact borrowed their number system from their neighbors to the south -- namely the Egyptians.
He cites strong similarities between Greek alphabetic numerals and Egyptian demotic numbers. Demotic was the written language of Egypt from the 8th Century BC to about the time of the fall of Rome. He says the system was likely transferred during a period of explosive commercial activity between Greece and Egypt after 600 BC.
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