Eye of Horus and Other Special Numbers

ReFaey et al. (2019) had an amazing article titled The Eye of Horus: The Connection Between Art, Medicine, and Mythology in Ancient Egypt explaining the Eye of Horus and how it connects to what the ancient Egyptians knew about art and medicine. I'll mainly be focusing on the mathematical aspects and start with a look into the myth itself. The most interesting part of my findings was that there was so much depth in the Eye of Horus that I've never heard about before. ReFaey et al. go more in depth as well about how the eye represents parts of the brain when superimposed on a cross section of the brain. It goes to show that the ancient Egyptians had a deep understanding of human anatomy for their time.

Horus is a god that was named in an ancient Egyptian myth of creation. He was the child of Isis and Osiris, the latter had been killed in a fight for a throne then pieced back together by his wife. Osiris became the lord of the underworld, and Horus became the hawk-god. Eventually, Horus challenged his father's killer (and brother) to a fight for the throne and eventually was ruled rightful ruler as he had not spilled any blood in his ambition for the throne.

The Eye of Horus was a sign of prosperity and protection. There are 6 parts to the eye, each representing a different symbol. Also, these different parts of the eye represent the unit fractions 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, and 1/64, these parts are known as Heqat fractions. Heqat was an ancient Egyptian measuring system, thought to be for measuring goods like grain and flour. According to ReFaey et al. these fractions each correspond to one of the five senses and thought. 1/2 represents smell, 1/4 for sight, 1/8 for thought, 1/16 for hearing, 1/32 for taste, and 1/64 for touch. 

Figure 1: The eye of Horus and Heqat fractions (ReFaey et al. 2009.)

Some numbers that are important to me:

8709 - for some reason a super memorable number. It was the number of the bus stop outside my school that I would text to the transit number to get estimated bus times. It's memorable because of the position the numbers are found on the text pad and the frequency I texted it.

314 - memorable to me because its the first 3 digits of pi. It is also my birthday, and in grade 5 I found out that I shared a birthday with Einstein and that made me feel extra special so I did a my presentation on him.

8 - thought to be a lucky number in Chinese culture. When picking phone numbers, my mom would always make my sister and I get a phone number that has the number 8 in it - the more the better.

4 - thought to be an unlucky number in many East Asian cultures as it sounds similar to the word for death. I always notice this one because of the history behind it. In many apartment buildings, they would not include floor 13 as its unlucky in Western cultures, but recently I've been noticing that they do the same for floor 4 as well.


     ReFaey K, Quinones GC, Clifton W, Tripathi S, Quiñones-Hinojosa A. The Eye of Horus: The Connection Between Art, Medicine, and Mythology in Ancient Egypt. Cureus. 2019 May 23;11(5):e4731. doi: 10.7759/cureus.4731. PMID: 31355090; PMCID: PMC6649877.

Comments

  1. Amanda FritzlanNovember 9, 2022 at 12:34 PM

    Siyu, I agree that ReFaey's connections between the brain and the Eye of Horus are fascinating. I also like that you are making the link between the base 2 unit fractions and the heqat unit. Wow, you and Einstein share a pi birthday! That's very cool. You should definitely share that with your students.

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