In
mathematics,
ancient Egyptian multiplication (also known as
Egyptian multiplication,
Ethiopian multiplication,
Russian multiplication, or
peasant multiplication), one of two multiplication methods used by scribes, was a systematic method for multiplying two numbers that does not require the
multiplication table, only the ability to multiply and
divide by 2, and to
add. It decomposes one of the
multiplicands (generally the larger) into a sum of
powers of two and creates a table of doublings of the second multiplicand. This method may be called
mediation and duplation, where
mediation means halving one number and duplation means doubling the other number. It is still used in some areas.