(Very much previously: Egyptian Fractions) Back in March, I had been reading On the Egyptian method of decomposing into unit fractions by Abdulrahman A. Abdulaziz, and I reported that: There is some indication that Ahmes preferred fractions with even denominators, because they are easier to double, and the usual Egyptian method of multiplication required repeated doubling. Although I had long ago written an article about why the Rhind mathematical papyrus (RMP) has a table of Egyptian fraction expansions of but no similar table for any other numerator. I had proposed a very reasonable algorithm for how the table of would give you the ability to compute for any , but for some reason I never connected this in my head with how the Egyptians actually did multiplication. The Egyptian multiplication algorithm makes my original surmise very plausible, but a little bit inside-out. Also, this blog has somehow never discussed the ancient Egyptian method of multiplication, which reduces…
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