Differences Between Egyptian and Babylonian Numerals

The two number systems are that they both use place based notation to represent larger numbers. However, place is much more important in the Babylonian system because the symbols alternate between two simple shapes. In the Egyptian system, while they did seem to order their symbols in terms of place, the did not necessarily need to. Their symbols were all different, so if one was to shift the order around it would still be the same number. For example, shifting the Egyptian number system would only rephrase the problem to 50 + 100 + 1 + 1 + 10 000. This would not work in Babylonia, the number behind the symbols would be lost.

In Roman numerals, place only kind of matters. They overcomplicated their symbols by having the adjacent symbols impact one another. These additional rules caused basic addition and subtraction to be much more difficult than a place based system.