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We have to accept the circumstance that the Egyptians did not think and reason as the Greeks did. If they found some exact method (however they may have discovered it), they did not ask themselves why it worked. They did not seek to establish its universal truth by an a priori symbolic argument that would show clearly and logically their thought processes. What they did was to explain and define in an ordred sequence the steps necessary in the proper procedure , and at the conclusion they added a verificatin or proof that the steps outlined did indeed lead to a correct solution of the problem. This was science as they knew it, and it is not proper or fitting that we of the twentieth century should compare too critically their methods with those of the Greeks or any other nation of later emergence, who, as it were, stood on their shoulders. We tend to forget that they were a people who had no plus, minus, multiplication, or division signs, no equals or square-root signs, no zero and no decimal point, no coinage, no indices, and no means of writing even the common fraction p/q; in fact, nothing even approaching a mathematical notation, nothing beyond a very complete knowledge of a twice-times table, and the ability to find two-thirds of any number, whether integral or fractional. With these restrictions they reached a relatively high level of mathmatical sophistication. Gillings, p. 234 (emphasis added)