I read somewhere – maybe in this forum that the ancient Egyptians were very fond of the number 123. I find this very interesting because this number relates to the fine structure constant and with the name “ellen” meaning “a” Greek in the Ionian (modern Greek) alphabet. Mathematically 123 is a Lucas number, it is the eleventh member of the Mian-Chowla sequence, and in base 10 it is a Smarandache consecutive number. See wikipedia here:

[en.wikipedia.org]

ELLHN = 5 + 30 + 30 + 8 + 50 = 123

2xsqrt(2)/(a x pi) = 2 x 1.414213562 x 137.03599911 / 3.14159 = 123.3757

Thus it is the perimeter of a square enclosed in a circle which has a perimeter the inverse of the fine structure constant. Interestingly I found:

“Egyptian Banks Co. for Technological Advancement (EBC) provided the banking community in Egypt with a shared cash network commercially called "123". The "123" network links more than 30 Egyptian Banks supporting more than 1500 ATMs distributed all over Egypt.”

Are there any ancient Egyptian sources referring to this number? Does it simply have to do with the fact that this number consists of the first three arithmetic digits “1”, “2”, “3”? If so this would be an indication that they analyzed digit wise numbers before the place value – modern number system was invented.