Isopsephy (; ''isos'' meaning "equal" and ''psephos'' meaning "pebble") or isopsephism is the practice of adding up the number values of the letters in a word to form a single number. The total number is then used as a metaphorical bridge to other words evaluating the equal number, which satisfies ''isos'' or "equal" in the term. The early Greeks used pebbles arranged in patterns to learn arithmetic and

geometry Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is ...

, which corresponds to ''psephos'' or "pebble" and "counting" in the term. Isopsephy is related to

gematria Gematria (; he, גמטריא or gimatria , plural or , ''gimatriot'') is the practice of assigning a numerical value to a name, word or phrase according to an alphanumerical cipher. A single word can yield several values depending on the cipher ...

: the same practice using the

Hebrew alphabet The Hebrew alphabet ( he, אָלֶף־בֵּית עִבְרִי, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is an abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewi ...

. It is also related to the ancient number systems of many other peoples (for the Arabic alphabet version, see

Abjad numerals The Abjad numerals, also called Hisab al-Jummal ( ar, حِسَاب ٱلْجُمَّل, ), are a decimal alphabetic numeral system/ alphanumeric code, in which the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet are assigned numerical values. They have been ...

). A gematria of

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern I ...

languages was also popular in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

from the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

to the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...

, and its legacy remains in

code-breaking Cryptanalysis (from the Greek ''kryptós'', "hidden", and ''analýein'', "to analyze") refers to the process of analyzing information systems in order to understand hidden aspects of the systems. Cryptanalysis is used to breach cryptographic sec ...

, numerology, and

Masonic Freemasonry or Masonry refers to fraternal organisations that trace their origins to the local guilds of stonemasons that, from the end of the 13th century, regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their interaction with authorities ...

symbolism today (see arithmancy).

History

Until Arabic numerals were adopted and adapted from

Indian numerals Indian or Indians may refer to: Peoples South Asia * Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor ** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country * South Asia ...

in the 8th and 9th centuries AD, and promoted in Europe by

Fibonacci Fibonacci (; also , ; – ), also known as Leonardo Bonacci, Leonardo of Pisa, or Leonardo Bigollo Pisano ('Leonardo the Traveller from Pisa'), was an Italian mathematician from the Republic of Pisa, considered to be "the most talented Wester ...

of Pisa with his 1202 book ''

Liber Abaci ''Liber Abaci'' (also spelled as ''Liber Abbaci''; "The Book of Calculation") is a historic 1202 Latin manuscript on arithmetic by Leonardo of Pisa, posthumously known as Fibonacci. ''Liber Abaci'' was among the first Western books to describe ...

'', numerals were predominantly alphabetical. For instance in

Ancient Greece Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of Classical Antiquity, classical antiquity ( AD 600), th ...

Greek numerals Greek numerals, also known as Ionic, Ionian, Milesian, or Alexandrian numerals, are a system of writing numbers using the letters of the Greek alphabet. In modern Greece, they are still used for ordinal numbers and in contexts similar to tho ...

used the alphabet. It is just a short step from using letters of the alphabet in everyday arithmetic and mathematics to seeing numbers in words, and to writing with an awareness of the numerical dimension of words. An early reference to isopsephy, albeit of more-than-usual sophistication (employing multiplication rather than addition), is from the mathematician Apollonius of Perga, writing in the 3rd century BC. He asks: "Given the verse: (), what does the product of all its elements equal?" More conventional are the instances of isopsephy found in graffiti at Pompeii, dating from around 79 AD. One reads "" Another says, " " Suetonius, writing in 121 AD, reports a political slogan that someone wrote on a wall in Rome: :: :: which appears to be another example. In Greek, Νερων, Nero, has the numerical value 50+5+100+800+50=1005, the same value as (idian metera apekteine) — "He killed his own mother", (10+4+10+1+50) + (40+8+300+5+100+1) + (1+80+5+20+300+5+10+50+5). A famous example is 666 in the Biblical

Book of Revelation The Book of Revelation is the final book of the New Testament (and consequently the final book of the Christian Bible). Its title is derived from the first word of the Koine Greek text: , meaning "unveiling" or "revelation". The Book of ...

(13:18): "Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six." The word rendered "count", , ''psephisato'', has the same "pebble" root as the word isopsephy. The Greek ''Neron Kaisar'' (

Nero Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus ( ; born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus; 15 December AD 37 – 9 June AD 68), was the fifth Roman emperor and final emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, reigning from AD 54 unti ...

Caesar in Latin/English) when transliterated into Hebrew

equals "six hundred sixty-six". Also in the 1st century AD, Leonidas of Alexandria created isopsephs, epigrams with equinumeral distichs, where the first hexameter and pentameter equal the next two verses in numerical value. He addressed some of them to Nero: :: :: :: :: Which translates to: "The muse of Leonidas of the Nile offers up to thee, O Caesar, this writing, at the time of thy nativity; for the sacrifice of Calliope is always without smoke: but in the ensuing year he will offer up, if thou wilt, better things than this." Here the sum of both the first and second distich is 5699. In another of his

distich A couplet is a pair of successive lines of metre in poetry. A couplet usually consists of two successive lines that rhyme and have the same metre. A couplet may be formal (closed) or run-on (open). In a formal (or closed) couplet, each of the ...

s, the

hexameter Hexameter is a metrical line of verses consisting of six feet (a "foot" here is the pulse, or major accent, of words in an English line of poetry; in Greek and Latin a "foot" is not an accent, but describes various combinations of syllables). It w ...

line is equal in number to its corresponding

pentameter Pentameter ( grc, πεντάμετρος, 'measuring five ( feet)') is a poetic meter. А poem is said to be written in a particular pentameter when the lines of the poem have the length of five feet, where a 'foot' is a combination of a particul ...

: :: :: Which translates to: "One line is made equal in number to one, not two to two; for I no longer approve of long epigrams." Here each line totals 4111. A headstone found at the Temple of Artemis at Sparta Orthia is a 2nd-century AD example of isopsephic elegiac verse. It says: :: :: :: It is the votive stele for a boy who won a competition in singing. The words in each line add up to that is 2730, and that total is also given at the end of each line. Also in the 2nd century AD, Aelius Nicon of

Pergamon Pergamon or Pergamum ( or ; grc-gre, Πέργαμον), also referred to by its modern Greek form Pergamos (), was a rich and powerful ancient Greek city in Mysia. It is located from the modern coastline of the Aegean Sea on a promontory on th ...

, the Greek

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

and builder described by his son, the famous physician

Galen Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus ( el, Κλαύδιος Γαληνός; September 129 – c. AD 216), often Anglicized as Galen () or Galen of Pergamon, was a Greek physician, surgeon and philosopher in the Roman Empire. Considered to be one ...

, as having "mastered all there was to know of the science of geometry and numbers", was a master in composing isopsephic works.

Letter values of the Greek alphabet

In Greek, each unit (1, 2, ..., 9) was assigned a separate letter, each tens (10, 20, ..., 90) a separate letter, and each hundreds (100, 200, ..., 900) a separate letter. This requires 27 letters, so the 24-letter alphabet was extended by using three obsolete letters:

digamma Digamma or wau (uppercase: Ϝ, lowercase: ϝ, numeral: ϛ) is an archaic letter of the Greek alphabet. It originally stood for the sound but it has remained in use principally as a Greek numeral for 6. Whereas it was originally called ''waw' ...

(also used are stigma or, in modern Greek, ) for 6,

qoppa Koppa or qoppa (; as a modern numeral sign: ) is a letter that was used in early forms of the Greek alphabet, derived from Phoenician qoph (). It was originally used to denote the sound, but dropped out of use as an alphabetic character in fav ...

for 90, and

sampi Sampi (modern: ϡ; ancient shapes: , ) is an archaic letter of the Greek alphabet. It was used as an addition to the classical 24-letter alphabet in some eastern Ionic dialects of ancient Greek in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, to denote some t ...

for 900. This alphabetic system operates on the additive principle in which the numeric values of the letters are added together to form the total. For example, 241 is represented as σμα (200 + 40 + 1).

Notes

References

*''The Greek Qabalah: Alphabetic Mysticism and Numerology in the Ancient World'', Kieren Barry,

Samuel Weiser Weiser Antiquarian Books is the oldest occult bookstore in the United States. It specialises in books on Aleister Crowley and his circle, magic, mysticism, eastern religions and alternative spirituality. Its earlier New York incarnation, The Weiser ...

, 1999. {{ISBN, 1-57863-110-6

External links

Greek Gematria/Isopsephia Calculator – Requires Flash 8 or greater – Also Accepts Unicode Greek letters and will add them up for youGreek Isopsephia Line Calculator – Unicode – Flash not required
Greek words and phrases Numerology Language and mysticism

History

Letter values of the Greek alphabet

See also

Notes

References

External links