Task
Divide nine loaves of bread equally between ten people.
Two Forms of Division
Nine-tenths, one-tenth.
Two thirds, one-fifth, one-thirtieth.
Egyptian fractions were either unit:
a one in the numerator;
or two-thirds.
Break many loaves into two-thirds, one-third segments.
Use the fact that two-thirds (likewise two thirds), one-fifth, and one-thirtieth sum to nine-tenths.
All ten receive comparable sized chunks of bread, under the second (older, Egyptian) form of division.
The modern method yields the first division.
Nine people receive large pieces. One person gets nine small items.
6 6 2000 Version http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~klinger/etext.html