B. N. Morozov

By this author

On the discovery of the 14th century number notations by St. Stephan of Perm

Issue 1 from 01.03.2008

St. Stephan of Perm (c. 1340-1396), the «Enlightener of Perm», authored the script for and the first translations into the language of Komi-Perm, an ethnicity in the North-East of European Russia. Several extant sources, manuscripts as well as icon inscriptions, reveal that he also created an original system of number notations for this language and allow its reconstruction. The ancient Perm numbers, like the Russian numbers of the time, were based on letters. The alphabet created by Stephan had 27 letters. Using the first nine letters to represent the numbers from 1 to 9, the following nine letters to represent the tens from 10 to 90, and the last group of nine letters to represent the hundreds from 100 to 900, Stephan could write numbers up to 999 without having a special sign for zero. The Komi script also used an additional sign, a «tail» that could be added to a letter. With the help of letters modified in this way, one could extend the Perm notations to write numbers up to 999999.

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