Church Slavonic figures. Old Slavonic numerals of pre-Petrine times: alphabetic numerals

Church Slavonic numerals Greek numerals Hebrew numerals Roman numerals

Numbers in Church Slavonic (as well as in Greek, Hebrew and Latin) books are denoted by letters. The Church Slavonic letter-number has a dot above and after itself. In two-digit and multi-digit numbers, the title is placed on the second letter from the end.

Thousands are written in the same letters as units, tens and hundreds, but with the addition of a symbol before the letter. ҂ . Numbers are composed in the same way as in modern Arabic notation: first thousands are written, then hundreds, then tens and ones, with the exception of numbers ending in 11 ... 19, where the last two characters are rearranged according to the Slavic reading (for example, first "one" and then "twenty" = 10).

g҃. - 3 days. - 14 tmє. - 345 ҂iѿp҃i. - 8888 ҂r҂k҂gun҃ѕ. — 123456

If the number of hundreds, tens or ones in a multi-digit digit is zero, then no sign like zero is substituted in their place, and the number becomes shorter.

҂вѳ҃і. — 2019 ҂в҃к. — 2020 ҂в҃. — 2000

Large numbers (tens and hundreds of thousands, millions and billions) in different sources may not be expressed through a sign ҂ , but with a specially circled letter used to designate units. However, for large numbers, these notations were rather unstable.

10 000 - ҂і҃, (tma)
100 000 — ҂р҃, (legeon, not sure)
1 000 000 — ҂҂а, (leodr)
10 000 000 — (vran)
100 000 000 — (deck)
1000 000 000 — (tma topics)

The Church Slavonic system of numbers is an absolute copy of the Greek number system.

The Greek (Ionian, Modern Greek) number system is an alphabetical notation of numbers, in which, as symbols for counting, they use the letters of the classical Greek alphabet and some letters of the preclassical era, such as ϝ (digamma), ϟ (koppa) and ϡ (sampi).

γʹ - 3 ιδʹ - 14 τμεʹ - 345 ͵ηωπηʹ - 8888 ͵ρ͵κ͵γυνϛʹ - 123456

The Hebrew numeral system uses the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet as numbers. The alphabetic designations of numbers were borrowed by the Jews from the ancient Greeks. Hebrew numbers are written from right to left; the last (left) letter is preceded by a double quote - gershaim ( ״ ). If there is only one letter, then a single quote is placed after it - geresh ( ׳ ). To designate 1-9 thousand, the first nine letters are used, after which an apostrophe is placed. The exceptions are numbers ending in 15 and 16, which are represented as 9+6 and 9+7 respectively (for "Do not remember the Name of God in vain").

ג׳ — 3 י״ד — 14 שמ״ה — 345 ח’תתפ״ח — 8888

Unlike the first three, in the Roman numeral system, only 7 letters of the Latin alphabet are used to represent any number: I (1), V (5), X (10), L (50), C (100), D (500) and M(1000). Subsequently, 4 more characters were added to them (from 5,000 to 100,000). To correctly write large numbers in Roman numerals, you must first write down the number of thousands, then hundreds, then tens, and finally units. Numbers are written by repeating these numbers. At the same time, if a large number is in front of a smaller one, then they are added, if a smaller number is in front of a larger one, then the smaller one is subtracted from the larger one.

III - 3 XIV - 14 CCCXLV - 345 ↁMMMDCCCLXXXVIII - 8888 ↈↂↂMMMCDLVI - 123456

In ancient times in Rus', numbers were denoted by letters. Very often, beginners are interested in these designations for dating coins. This article will help you deal with this problem.

Church Slavonic numbers.

Single numbers in ancient Slavic times were written using letters, over which the symbol "titlo" was placed.

• The number one was denoted by the letter "az" - a;
• number two - "lead" - in;
• number three - "verb" - g;
• number four - "good" - d;
• number five - "is" - the letter e in the other direction;
• number six - "green" - s;
• number seven - "earth" - s;
• figure eight - "like" - and;
• number nine - "fita" - similar to the letter d (having an oval shape, crossed out from below).

Decimal digits.

• The number ten - the letter "and" - i;
• number twenty - "kako" - to;
• figure thirty - "people" - l;
• figure forty - "think" - m;
• fifty - "our" - n;
• sixty - the letter "xi" - the letter z with horns at the top - Ѯ;
• seventy - "he" - about;
• eighty - "peace" - n;
• ninety - "worm" - h.

Hundredths.

• The number one hundred - "rtsy" - p;
• two hundred - "word" - with;
• three hundred - "firmly" - t;
• four hundred - "uk" - at;
• five hundred - "fert" - f;
• six hundred - "dick" - x;
• seven hundred - "psi" - trident - Ѱ. By the way, a fairly common symbol. For example, in the area of ​​the Tsimlyansk reservoir, people found a limestone with the symbol of a "trident". Volgodonsk local historian - lover of Chalykh believes that this is a symbol of the Khazars, denoting the runic letter - "x". But it can be assumed that the Khazars used Slavic alphabetic numbers, and this sign indicates the seven hundredth year of our era;
• eight hundred - "o" - ὼ;
• nine hundred - "tsy" - c. There was a recent history with this figure too. A man found an old church book, where the year was indicated by numbers, where the second character corresponded to the letter - c. When I said that it was only for only 1900, the person did not want to believe it, believing that the book was much older, since it had a letter designation of the date of issue.

Thousands.

Thousands had a corresponding sign in front of them - an oblique line crossed out twice. That is, the figure in front had an oblique crossed out line, and then the number was called letters. For example, 1000 corresponded to - the letter - "az" - a, and so on by the name of the unit numbers.

Old Slavonic number system

In the Middle Ages, on the lands where the Slavs lived, they used the Cyrillic alphabet, a system for writing numbers based on this alphabet was widespread. Indian numerals appeared in 1611. By that time, Slavic numbering was used, consisting of 27 letters of the Cyrillic alphabet. Above the letters, denoting the numbers put a mark - titlo. At the beginning of the XVIII century. as a result of the reform introduced by Peter I, the Indian numerals and the Indian number system replaced the Slavic numbering from use, although in the Russian Orthodox Church (in books) it is used to this day. Cyrillic numerals are derived from Greek. In form, these are ordinary letters of the alphabet with special marks indicating their numerical reading. The Greek and Old Slavonic ways of writing numbers had much in common, but there were also differences. The handwritten work of the Novgorod monk Kirik, written by him in 1136, is still considered the first Russian monument of mathematical content. In this work, Kirik showed himself to be a very skillful counter and a great number lover. The main tasks that are considered by Kirik are of chronological order: the calculation of time, the flow between any events. When calculating, Kirik used the numbering system, which was called the small list and was expressed by the following names:

10000 - darkness

100000 - legion

In addition to a small list, in Ancient Rus' there was also a large list, which made it possible to operate with very large numbers. In the system of a large list of basic bit units, they had the same names as in a small one, but the ratio between these units was different, namely:

a thousand thousand - darkness,

darkness to darkness is a legion,

legion of legions - leodrus,

leodr leodriv - raven,

10 ravens - a log.

About the last of these numbers, that is, about the log, it was said: "And more than this is understandable to the human mind." Units, tens and hundreds were represented by Slavic letters with a ~ sign above them, called "titlo", to distinguish numbers from letters. Darkness, legion and leodre were represented by the same letters, but to distinguish them from units, tens, hundreds and thousandths were circled. With numerous fractions of one hour, Kirik introduced his system of fractional units, and he called the fifth part the second hour, the twenty-fifth - three hours, the one hundred and twenty-fifth - four hours, etc. He had the smallest fraction of seven hours, and he believed that there can no longer be smaller fractions of hours: “This does not happen anymore, there are not born from the seventh fractional, which will be 987500 in days.” When making calculations, Kirik did the operations of addition and multiplication, and distribution, in all likelihood, he carried out shlyakhompidbora, considering successively multiples for a given dividend and divisor. Kirik made the main chronological calculations from the date, which was taken in Ancient Rus' as the date of the creation of the world. Calculating in this way the moment of writing his work, Kirik (with an error of 24 months) states that 79,728 months have passed since the creation of the world, or 200 unknown and 90 unknown and 1 unknown and 652 hours. Kirik determines his age by the same kind of calculation, and we learn that he was born in 1110. Operating with fractional hours, Kirik in essence dealt with a geometric progression with a denominator of 5. In the work of Kirik, a place is also given to the question of calculating paschals, which is so important for churchmen and being one of the most difficult arithmetic questions, the ministers of the church had to solve. If Kirik does not give common methods such calculations, then in any case he shows his ability to do them. Kirik's handwritten work is the only mathematical document that has come down to us since those distant times. However, this does not mean at all that other mathematical works did not exist in Rus' at that time. It must be assumed that many manuscripts have been lost to us due to the fact that they were lost during the troubled years of princely civil strife, perished in fires, and always accompanied the raids of neighboring peoples on Rus'.

Let's write the numbers 23 and 444 in Slavic system reckoning.

We see that the entry turned out to be no longer than our decimal. This is because alphabetic systems used at least 27 "digits". But these systems were only convenient for writing numbers up to 1000. True, the Slavs, like the Greeks, knew how to write numbers and more than 1000. For this, new designations were added to the alphabetical system. So, for example, the numbers 1000, 2000, 3000 ... were written in the same “numbers” as 1, 2, 3 ..., only a special sign was placed in front of the “number” from the bottom left. The number 10000 was denoted by the same letter as 1, only without a title, it was circled. This number was called "darkness". Hence the expression "darkness of the people."

Thus, to designate "themes" (plural of the word darkness), the first 9 "digits" were circled.

10 topics, or 100,000, was the highest order unit. They called it Legion. 10 legions made up the "leord". The largest of the quantities that have their own designation was called the "deck", it was equal to 1050. It was believed that "there is nothing more to understand for the human mind." This way of writing numbers, as in the alphabetical system, can be considered as the beginnings of a positional system, since in it the same symbols were used to designate units of different digits, to which only special characters were added to determine the value of the digit. Alphabetical number systems were not very suitable for operating with large numbers. In the course of the development of human society, these systems gave way to positional systems.

Slavic numerals were used for counting and recording. In this counting system, characters were used in sequential order of the alphabet. In many ways, it is similar to the Greek system for writing digital characters. Slavic numbers are the designation of numbers using the letters of ancient alphabets -

Titlo - special designation

Many ancient peoples used letters from their alphabets to write numbers. The Slavs were no exception. They denoted Slavic numbers with letters from the Cyrillic alphabet.

In order to distinguish a letter from a number, a special icon was used - a title. All Slavic numerals had it above the letter. The symbol is written on top and is a wavy line. As an example, the image of the first three numbers in the Old Slavonic designation is given.

This sign is also used in other ancient counting systems. It only slightly changes its shape. Initially, this type of designation came from Cyril and Methodius, since they developed our alphabet based on the Greek one. The title was written with both more rounded edges and sharp ones. Both options were considered correct and were used everywhere.

Features of the designation of numbers

The designation of numbers on the letter occurred from left to right. The exception was the numbers from "11" to "19". They were written from right to left. Historically, this has been preserved in the names of modern numerals ( eleven twelve etc., that is, the first is the letter denoting units, the second - tens). Each letter of the alphabet denoted the numbers from 1 to 9, from 10 to 100 to 900.

Not all letters of the Slavic alphabet were used to designate numbers. So, "Zh" and "B" were not used for numbering. They simply did not exist in the Greek alphabet, which was adopted as a model). Also, the countdown began from one, and not from the usual zero for us.

Sometimes a mixed system of designating numbers was used on coins - from Cyrillic and. Most often, only lowercase letters were used.

When Slavic symbols from the alphabet represent numbers, some of them change their configuration. For example, the letter "i" in this case is written without a dot with the sign "titlo" and means 10. The number 400 could be written in two ways, depending on the geographical location of the monastery. So, in the old Russian printed chronicles, the use of the letter "ika" is typical for this figure, and in the old Ukrainian - "izhitsa".

What are Slavic numerals?

Our ancestors, using special symbols, wrote dates and necessary numbers in chronicles, documents, coins, and letters. Complex numbers up to 999 were denoted by several letters in a row under common sign"title". For example, 743 in writing was indicated by the following letters:

• Z (ground) - "7";
• D (good) - "4";
• G (verb) - "3".

All these letters were united under a common icon.

Slavic numerals, which denoted 1000, were written with a special sign ҂. It was placed in front of the desired letter with a title. If it was necessary to write a number greater than 10,000, special signs were used:

• "Az" in a circle - 10,000 (darkness);
• "Az" in a circle of dots - 100,000 (legion);
• "Az" in a circle consisting of commas - 1,000,000 (leodre).

A letter with the required digital value is placed in these circles.

Examples of using Slavic numerals

Such a designation could be found in documentation and on ancient coins. The first such figures can be seen on Peter's silver coins in 1699. With this designation, they were minted for 23 years. These coins are now considered rarities and are highly valued among collectors.

On gold coins, symbols were stuffed for 6 years, from 1701. Copper coins with Slavic numerals were in use from 1700 to 1721.

In ancient times, the church had a huge influence on politics and the life of society as a whole. Church Slavonic figures were also used to record orders and annals. They were designated on the letter according to the same principle.

The education of children also took place in churches. Therefore, the children learned spelling and counting from publications and annals using Church Slavonic letters and numbers. This training was not easy enough, since the designation of large numbers with several letters simply had to be memorized.

All sovereign decrees were also written using Slavic numerals. The scribes of that time were required not only to know by heart the entire alphabet of the Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets, but also the designation of absolutely all the numbers and the rules for writing them. Ordinary residents of the state were often unlearned about this, because literacy was the privilege of very few.

Happy Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary!

In this lesson, we will analyze the CSL tsifir, master cursive writing and consider the most common words under the titles.

Numbers in the CSL language are written not in Arabic numerals, but in the same CSL letters with a mandatory single simple title on top. This tradition is borrowed from the ancient Greek language, where all letters of the alphabet had numerical values. However, since the CSL alphabet differs from the Greek one (some letters are not used, many are added), then in the CSL the numerical values ​​of the letters in some places are not in quite alphabetical order. You need to memorize them gradually, because otherwise it will be difficult to navigate in church books, where the numbers of pages, chapters, "conceived", verses of Holy Scripture, dates, years of publication, and other numerical elements are given precisely in the CSL form (see illustration 1) .

Since numbers consisting of an integer number of tens or hundreds have their own separate letter designations in the CSL language, often the Arabic multi-valued notation of a number corresponds to only one character in the CSL. Also pay attention to this feature: in the CSL language, numbers from 11 to 19 are written in numbers in the same order as they are read (ONE-TEN = AI, TWELVE = BI..., i.e., first the number of units is said and written, then 10; in Russian, a similar pronunciation has been preserved - “one-on-twenty, two-on-twenty ..., although due to the use of Arabic numbers with their strictly positional system, we actually write the opposite - first 10, and then the number of units over ten: 11 \u003d 10 + 1, 12 \u003d 10 + 2 ... For numbers over 20 in the CSL, the order of both reading and writing is similar to Russian and Arabic: on the left is the number of tens, on the right the number of units is added to it. according to the positional principle, i.e. additional numbers are assigned on the right to the designation of thousands, hundreds, tens, but with the preservation of the indicated tradition of writing numbers from 11 to 19 “inside”.

In single-digit numbers, the title is placed over a single letter, in two-digit and multi-digit numbers - over the second letter from the end (penultimate); the thousands sign (double-crossed slash) is not taken into account: if there is only one letter digit besides it, the title is placed above it, i.e. it is never placed above the thousands sign (see illustration 2). Above the letter OT (number 800), which already has a superscript, the title may not be placed at all.

I recommend using these tables to practice more often in reading and writing multi-digit numbers and translating them from the chronology system from the Creation of the world and from the Nativity of Christ. The textbooks, references to which were given in previous lessons, also contain some exotic Old Slavic designations for very large numbers (TMA, LEGION, LEODR, VRAN, KOLODA, TMA TEM), but they do not actually occur in church books. We will learn how to read and write quantitative and ordinal numbers in words and their declension a little later.
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Let's move on to the CSL cursive. We need it mainly so that you can in the future most in a simple way, using a regular pen and paper, independently perform various practical tasks of our course, if you do not have CSL fonts and special software tools for typing and editing them with all the necessary characters, including superscripts, on your computer. We will combine the practical development of cursive writing with real exercises, so you will not need much additional effort for it. See illustration 3: this is a scan of the CSL alphabet table, which I wrote out manually (with pen and ink); the arrows indicate the recommended directions and the sequence of manual strokes for each letter. Let's not waste time drawing capital letters, one lowercase is quite enough. You can use this table and write in the same way, or change the way you write individual letters in a way that suits you personally. My goal is just to show that there is nothing complicated in this.

In the above table, stroke directions take into account the specifics of using a simple metal pen: it is more convenient for them to stroke from top to bottom and from left to right (for right-handers); but you will most likely use a regular ballpoint (preferably gel) pen, so the stroke directions can be more free. If you can easily draw the outline of a letter in such a way that you start from the end point and go equally from bottom to top and from right to left, then you can reduce the number of individual strokes in some letters (for example, THOUGHT, OH, OMEGA, Izhitsa) by drawing them in one stroke, without taking your hand off - then you can write faster. Ultimately, our task now is not calligraphy, but the development of a purely technical technique. It is quite enough that you yourself easily recognize the letters you have written. Just try to keep them about the same height (about 1.5 to 2 times your normal handwriting in Russian), and immediately get used to leaving enough spacing between lines to accommodate superscripts. Of course, it is more convenient to use lined paper (for example, a regular checkered notebook, which I once again recommend having specifically for CSL exercises).
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Let us now return to the topic of words under titles that we identified in the last lesson. By the way, pay attention: in CSL the very word TITLO - cf. kind, and in plural. in number, it is written like this: (many) TITLA (moreover, “chamber” is used as an accent mark over I to distinguish it from the genitive case of a singular number), and not “titles” at all, as in Russian (sometimes they mistakenly think that TITLA - this is a female r. unit h.). In illustration 4 you will see the main set of titles found in church books of the 19th and subsequent centuries, and some typical examples. It is very important to master the correct recognition of titles in writing and their reading (and the words under the titles are always pronounced aloud in full, without abbreviations). they are quite common in church texts. Hesitation on unusual titles or their incorrect disclosure are the most common mistakes of novice readers. It must be remembered that in each particular word one or more letters are abbreviated, and in the case of an inscription over it not a simple, but an alphabetic title, it indicates only one (the most important) of the missing ones.

Figure 5 shows a fairly representative table of most of the words under the titles. All derived words, as well as compound ones, also use similar abbreviations. In some cases, there may be two or even three spellings of the same word under the title. Pay attention to similar but different abbreviations of related words, for example: PRV(D)N = PRAVEDEN and PRP(D)BEN = PRESENT; CHT(C)b = HONOR and CHT(C)b = CLEAN (it is especially easy to confuse in the variants CHT(C)NY = CLEAN and CHT(C)NY = HONEST), etc.

As an important independent exercise, rewrite this entire table of words under the titles in cursive, with a transcript (also in CSL, and not in Russian, as in the table). I would also recommend printing this table on a piece of paper and keep it at hand during the first time during the exercises. If some words cause difficulties, especially in setting stresses, look in the CSL dictionaries, links to which were given in our community. The exercise on words under titles will simultaneously form your skill in quickly free writing CSL words in cursive (you will see that there is nothing difficult in this) and will help you master the most frequent abbreviations. Meeting them later in the text, you can easily remember how they are revealed, and you can read them correctly. (I can confess: when I started to learn the CSL language, in order to quickly memorize the words under the titles, I forced myself to manually write each word from such a table not even once, but 10 times in a row in a row. It took only about an hour, and the result was fantastic: I've never had trouble recognizing those words again!)

In conclusion, a few more exercises to consolidate the understanding of CSL tsifiri, they are shown in Figure 6. Since now you can already write both CSL words and letter designations of numbers, if necessary, looking at the tables shown in Figures 1 and 2, you will not work hard to cope with these tasks. Of particular practical use is the last exercise, which you can supplement yourself by finding the corresponding numbers of chapters and verses in the CSL and the Russian Bible and writing down their CSL designations in numbers. This will significantly help in the future to quickly navigate in church books, to find the right place in them by the table of contents or liturgical indications of chapters, verses, "conceptions" and pages.
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In the next lesson, we will consider complex (but remarkably beautiful!) Initial letters, learn how to parse headings with “ligature”, and also begin mastering the CSL of the lexical minimum - we will write out various service words that often cause bewilderment and misunderstanding in real texts.
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Selection, abbreviated presentation, editing, processing of graphic fragments from various publications, correction of detected inaccuracies: Natalia Nezhentseva, 2016.