Egyptian multiplication and division

Ok kiddo, let's talk about Egyptian multiplication and division!

When we talk about multiplication, we mean taking two numbers and finding out what happens when we add them together multiple times. For example, what happens when we add the number 4 to itself 3 times (4 + 4 + 4)? We get 12!

Now, the Egyptians didn't have calculators like we do today. So they had to come up with a different way to do multiplication. They would use a method called doubling and adding.

Here's how it works: Let's say we want to multiply 4 by 6. We would start with the larger number (in this case, 6) and double it until it's larger than the other number (4). So we double 6 to get 12. But that's still bigger than 4, so we double 6 again to get 24.

Now, we look at our original number (4) and see if it's an even or odd number. 4 is even, so we divide it by 2 to get 2.

Now, we keep doubling our 6 (12, 24, 48) and dividing our 4 (2, 1, 0). Each time we divide by 2, we add the current doubled number to a running total.

So, our final answer is 24 + 48 = 72. So 4 multiplied by 6 is 72!

Now, let's talk about division. Division is when we take a big number and split it up into equal parts. For example, if we have 8 cookies and we want to share them equally between 2 people, each person would get 4 cookies.

The Egyptians had a different way of doing division too. They would use a method called repeated subtraction.

Here's how it works: Let's say we want to divide 16 by 4. We would start by subtracting 4 from 16 as many times as we can, until we can't anymore. So we subtract 4 from 16 to get 12, then we subtract another 4 to get 8, then another 4 to get 4, and finally another 4 to get 0.

Now, we count the number of times we subtracted 4 (4 times). And that's our answer! So 16 divided by 4 is 4.

Cool, huh? The Egyptians were pretty smart!