The Eye of Horus was also known as Wadjet, a symbol believed to provide protection, health, and rejuvenation (Ancient Origins, n.d.). Ancient Egyptians believed that Osiris was the king of Egypt and his brother Set murdered Osiris and became the new king. Osiris was temporarily brought back to life and impregnated his wife with a son named Horus. Horus eventually went on to avenge his father’s death but lost an eye. One version of the story was that his eye was ripped into 6 pieces. His eye was magically restored, and ancient Egyptians believed that it had healing properties.
The Eye of Horus was
also a math symbol. Each of the six parts of the ripped eye was given a
fraction as a unit of measurement; right eye is ½, pupil is ¼, eyebrow is 1/8, left
side of eye is 1/16, curved tail is 1/32, and teardrop is 1/64 (Ancient
Origins, n.d.). These fractions all add up to 63/64. These unit fractions are
powers of two in their denominators, and used to represent fractions of hekat,
which was the unit measure of capacity for grains.
One of the most
interesting findings was that the Eye of Horus also has connections to medicine
and neuroanatomy. Specifically, the Eye of Horus resembles the corpus callosum,
metathalamus, olfactory tract, and brain stem located in the human brain.
Sports has been a big part of my life and I have worn many numbers. My favourite number is the number 9, which was worn by my favourite hockey player, Paul Kariya. Kariya was an amazing hockey player and often compared to as “the next Wayne Gretzky. He was also born in Vancouver, BC. When I played hockey, I couldn’t always get the number 9, so I settled on numbers that either had 9 in them (like 19, 39, 91) or multiples of 9 (like 18). Numbering in sports has always interested me and I was always curious to learn about the stories behind a number. Mathematically, there are so many interesting things with number 9. One of them being that for any natural number multiplied by 9, and the digits are repeatedly added until it is a single digit, the sum of the numbers will be 9. For example: 9 times 987654321 = 8,888,888,889. Then 8+8+8+8+8+8+8+8+8+9=81. Then 8+1=9.
References:
Ancient Origins, (n.d.) Eye of Horus: The True Meaning of an Ancient, Powerful, Symbol. Retrieved October 16, 2020 from https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-other-artifacts/eye-horus-0011014.
Refaey K, Quinones G C,
Clifton W, et al. (2019) The Eye of Horus: The Connection Between Art,
Medicine, and Mythology in Ancient Egypt. Cureus 11(5): e4731.
doi:10.7759/cureus.4731
This is a lovely conversational post Matt. I am also particularly intrigued by the connections made between the Eye of Horus and neuroanatomy.
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