Egyptian Digits as Origin of the Hindu-Arabic Numerals Steven de Kloe ______________________________________________________________________________ number nine, number nine the Beatles, Revolution 9, the Beatles (the White Album), 1968 The ‘Hindu-Arabic numerals’ are the symbols for the figures from 1 to 9 and zero, to indicate numbers in a (almost always) decimal place-value system. They comprise what are called ‘the Arabic numerals’ in the European languages, the numerals in use in Arab countries called ‘Indian’ in Arabic and the ‘Devanagari’ numerals of India. This article aims to establish the plausibility of the hypothesis that ‘Egyptian digits’ in the shape of demotic numerals of the Roman Period, rather than strictly the elusive ‘Brahmi numerals’, formed the origin of the Hindu-Arabic numerals. To achieve this aim three sets of arguments are put forward: - the presence of zero as a figure in Egyptian documents of the second century AD - the similarity in shape of the demotic numerals to the Hindu-Arabic ones - astrological texts as the means of conveyance of these numerals from Egypt to India and further The earliest reference to the decimal place-value system with a symbol for zero in India appears in an astrological text from the third century AD, the Yavanajātaka (‘the Horoscopy of the Greeks’) of Sphujidhvaja. 1 This Sanskrit text is a versified version of a second century prose translation of a Greek original from Alexandria. 2 Attestations in Greek papyri from Egypt of the symbol for zero in the first centuries AD are always in an astronomical/astrological context and tied to the alphabetical sexagesimal notation. 3 This symbol for zero most often looks like and is considered to be an abbreviation for  ‘nothing’, “an arbitrarily invented symbol intended to indicate an empty place” or “the counterpart of the cuneiform punctuation mark ”. 4 In the demotic P. Carlsberg 32, identified as a table for positions of the planet Mercury, a demotic symbol for zero occurs twice, but due to its damaged state, like most of the papyri from Tebtunis/Tell Umm el-Breigat, its shape cannot well be determined. 5 P. Vindob. D(emotisch) 12006, also from the Faiyum, but from Soknopaiou Nesos/Dimê, has on the front side the text ‘Isis, the Divine Child and the World Order’, a ‘hemerology’. 6 To mark 1 D. Pingree, The Yavanajātaka of Sphujidhvaja (Cambridge, Massachusetts/London, 1978), vol. II, p.406-407. 2 Pingree, Yavanajātaka, vol. I, p.3. 3 A. Jones, Astronomical Papyri from Oxyrhynchus (P. Oxy. 4133-4300a)(Philadelphia, 1999), p.61-62 & fig.16. 4 O. Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity (Princeton, New Jersey, 1952), p.14: “… an arbitrarily invented symbol …”. A. Jones, Astronomical Papyri from Oxyrhynchus, p. 61: “… the cuneiform punctuation mark…”. 5 R.A. Parker, ‘Two Demotic Astronomical Papyri in the Carlsberg Collection’, Acta Orientalia 26 (1962), p.143- 147. (The photo of P. Carlsberg 32 there is better than Egyptian Astronomical Texts III, pl. 79 B.) F. Hoffmann, ‘Astronomische und astrologische Kleinigkeiten IV: Ein Zeichen für ,,Null” im P. Carlsberg 32?’, Enchoria 29 (2004/2005), p. 44-52. 6 M.A. Stadler, Isis, das göttliche Kind und die Weltordnung. Neue religiöse Texte aus dem Fayum nach dem Papyrus Wien D. 12006 Recto (Vienna, 2004).