Unlike the Egyptians, the Greeks outgrew this primitive way of writing numbers and developed a more sophisticated system. Instead of using two strokes to represent 2, or three Hs to represent 300 as the Egyptian style of counting did, a newer Greek system of writing, appearing before 500 BC, had distinct letters for 2, 3, 300, and many other numbers (Figure 1). In this way the Greeks avoided repeated letters. For instance, writing the number 87 in the Egyptian system would require 15 symbols: eight heels and seven vertical marks. The new Greek system would need only two symbols: π for 80, and
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