Published October 16, 2022 | Version 2
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Greek numerals and word values: the Greek number of the beast

  • 1. Samuel van Houten Genootschap

Description

The ancient Greeks used their alphabet also as numerals, using an apostroph, acute accent or prime for the distinction. With α’ = 1 and β’ = 2 and ι’ = 10, then ια’ = 11 and βι’ = 12, since the value of the letters mattered and they did not have a place value system.  The 1000s were denoted with the “hasta” (a subscript prime, U + 0375), with ͵α’ = 1000 and ͵β’ = 2000 etcetera. In Mathematica 13.1 the routine IntegerString translates Hindu-Arabic numbers into Greek, e.g. 1101 → ͵αρα´. There is no built-in inverse however. This is provided in the present package. There is the issue of using f ‘ = 6 or ς ‘ = 6. Latin letters might be used for ease of input. An application is the calculation of “the number of the beast” 666, as calculated by the Apostle John in the Book of Revelations. The “word value” of a name of a person can be determined via addition of the values of the separate letters, like  Ζ’ + ε’ + υ’ + ς’ = 7 + 5 + 400 + 6 = 418.

Notes

This is the PDF of the Mathematica notebook, see the supplementary files. PM. The first version was at the Wolfram Community, had a spelling error "digramma', and was less specific on the difference between digamma / wau en digamma / stigma.

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Software: 10.5281/zenodo.7213149 (DOI)