Good afternoon everyone,

Imagine my delight when I found out that there is an Egyptian goddess of spreadsheets. Enjoy a Fem Fri devoted to what I am going to call female number mystics.

I know about Seshat, Egyptian goddess of spreadsheets, via Fahmi Quadir, who named her hedge fund for her:

Raised in New York by parents who emigrated from Bangladesh, Quadir is a rarity for more than just her strategy in an industry dominated by middle-aged white men. She named her fund for the ancient Egyptian goddess of accounting, math and knowledge.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-01/cohodes-protege-to-raise-200-million-for-a-short-hedge-fund

And here's more about Seshat herself:

She was depicted as a woman wearing a panther-skin dress (the garb of the funerary stm priests) and a headdress that was also her hieroglyph which may represent either a stylized flower or seven pointed star on a standard that is beneath a set of down-turned horns. (The horns may have originally been a crescent, linking Seshat to the moon and hence to her spouse, the moon god of writing and knowledge, Thoth.)

http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/seshat.htm

This is a number mystic you might want to know about – St Zita. She's the patron saint of losing your keys, and so – and this is not the official Catholic Church position, but it checks out to me – very likely also the patron saint of forgotten passwords. She used to have a chapel devoted to her in London, which was destroyed in the Blitz and replaced with my least favourite building of all time. Anyway – the incorruptible St Zita!

After many years of working as a domestic, she was promoted to head housekeeper, and a series of miracles began to reward her hard work and piety. The story most often related concerns her distribution of bread to the poor. One day, as she was smuggling bread from the home of the family she worked for, a fellow servant ratted her out. When the head of the family pulled open her apron, instead of bread, only flowers fell to the ground. According to legend, when she died at age 60, the church bells spontaneously began to toll.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/incorruptible-st-zita

Finally, this is more of a conceptual number mystic, but it's also a reason to read about and enjoy the Icelandic language:

When the University of Iceland got its first computer in 1964, Icelandic did not have a word for “computer.” So the guardians of the language invented one: tölva—a fusion of tala (number) and völva (prophetess) that adds up to the wonderfully poetic “prophetess of numbers.”

https://gizmodo.com/icelandic-has-the-best-words-for-technology-1702697272

Happy Friday! Stay safe if it is cold where you are.

A xx.