Astronomy
The Egyptians had long made astronomical observations. They grouped the stars into twelve zodiacal constellations, giving them the names of those animals whose contours resembled their outlines (cat, jackal, snake, scarab, donkey, lion, goat, cow, falcon, baboon, ibis, crocodile); they divided the entire celestial equator into thirty-six parts, made tables of the position of stars in each hour of the night for fifteen-day periods. The Egyptians were the first in history to create a solar calendar.
The beginning of the year was considered the day of the first appearance of the star Sothis, or Sirius (the first day of the month of Thoth), which the Egyptians believed was the cause of the Nile flood. The Egyptians reckoned the year at three hundred and sixty-five days and divided it into three seasons (flooding, sowing, reaping) of four months in each (that, faofi, atir, hoyak – tibi, mehir, famenot, farmuti – pahon, payni, epifi, mesori); the month consisted of three decades of ten days. A “minor year” of five extra days was added to the last month. A day was divided into twenty-four hours, the length of which was not constant – it depended on the season: short daytime and long night hours in winter and long daytime and short night hours in summer. The summer was counted according to the years of each pharaoh’s reign.
Mathematics
The early birth of mathematics was associated with the need to carefully measure the rise of the Nile and consider the available resources. Its development was largely due to progress in monumental construction (pyramids, temples).
The counting system was fundamentally decimal. The Egyptians knew fractions, but only those with one in the numerator. They substituted division for consecutive subtraction and multiplied only by 2. They knew how to raise and extract the square root. In geometry, they were able to determine the area of a circle relatively accurately (as the square of 8/9 of its diameter), but they measured any quadrilateral and triangle as rectangles.
Medicine
The Egyptian art of medicine enjoyed special fame in the eastern Mediterranean and had a great influence on Greek and Arab medicine. Egyptian physicians attributed diseases to somatic causes and only epidemic diseases were attributed to the will of the gods. They generally mistook symptoms for diseases themselves, and therapy was aimed at combating individual symptoms; only rarely was a diagnosis made on the basis of the totality of symptoms. The main means of determining disease were examination, palpation and listening. Egyptian medicine was characterized by a considerable degree of specialization. It was especially successful in gynecology and oculistics.
Dentistry was also quite well developed, which is testified by good condition of teeth of mummies and availability of gold plates on damaged teeth. The art of surgery was also highly developed, as evidenced by the surgical instruments found and a surviving treatise on surgery. Thanks to mummification, the physicians had a fairly deep anatomical knowledge. They developed the doctrine of circulation and the heart as its main center. Cosmetics and pharmacology were an integral part of medicine; medicines were made mainly in special laboratories at temples; vomiting and laxatives made up the bulk of them. All these advances, however, did not prevent physicians from resorting to magic and spells.