who was the first ancient mathematician who used the value of zero
0 Ancient Egyptian numerals were base 10. They used hieroglyphs for the digits and were not positional. By 1770Â BC, the Egyptians had a symbol for zero in accounting texts. The symbol nfr, meaning beautiful, was also used to indicate the base level in drawings of tombs and pyramids and distances were measured relative to the base line as being above or below this line.[12]