Message #243275

[Ian Nottingham]

We have omitted the symbol for 'one', a simple '|', which was an obvious notation not coming from the initial letter of a number. For 5, 10, 100, 1000, 10000 there will be only one puzzle for the reader and that is the symbol for 5 which should by P if it was the first letter of Pente. However this is simply a consequence of changes to the Greek alphabet after the numerals coming from these letters had been fixed. By that time the symbols were probably not thought of as coming from the letters so there was no move to change them with changes to the symbols for the letters. The original form of π was G and so Pente was originally Gente.

Now the system was based on the additive principle in a similar way to Roman numerals. This means that 8 is simply V|||, the symbol for five followed by three symbols for one. Here is 1-10 in Greek acrophonic numbers.



1-10 in Greek acrophonic numbers.