> are all equal to the same amount This may be modern schooling at work. I've heard that one motivating factor for the ancient egyptian's strange-to-us mathema

> are all equal to the same amount This may be modern schooling at work. I've heard that one motivating factor for the ancient egyptian's strange-to-us mathematical style ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_fraction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_fraction ) is that when they divvied stuff up, they needed to do it in a way that was more obviously fair than we do. Example: we have four workers on our gang and need to pay them with 3L of beer and 3 loaves of bread at the end of the day. The beer is easy; just pour equal levels in three similar containers. For us, the loaves are easy too: give 3 workers 1 * 3/4 loaf and the last one 3 * 1/4 loaf. For the ancient egyptians (who might complain the last one either got smaller portions or more things) it'd be important to give everyone obviously the same portion: 1 * (1/2 + 1/4) loaf.