Mathematical amusements built around "symbolic" numbers often turn out to be a genuine gateway into major theoretical fields. Behind their apparent lightness sometimes lie concepts of great depth, sometimes drawing on the same algorithms, reasoning and computational tools found in so-called "more serious" research. Beneath seemingly anecdotal properties lie rigorous and elegant mathematical structures, testifying to the universality of mathematical language. And when they dress themselves up in references to popular culture – from rock music to horror films –, these numerical curiosities become the stage for an unexpected dialogue between science and imagination. Straddling superstition, humor and scientific rigor, these number games remind us that mathematics too knows how to cultivate mystery… and sometimes even flirt with the devil.
666: the number of the beast --------------------------
"Let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and that number is six hundred and sixty-six." This passage from Revelation (13:18) attributes the number 666 to the beast, a monster associated with the Antichrist. It survives today in popular culture. In 1982, the metal band Iron Maiden devoted a song to it (The Number of the Beast), and it has since become a lasting fixture in the imagery of horror films and heavy metal festivals.
At the time Revelation was written, at the end of the 1st century, positional decimal notation did not yet exist. It would not be until the 4th century that India began to use it. In the Middle Ages, Christian exegetes assigned symbolic meaning to numbers: 7 represented divine perfection (the days of creation), while 6 symbolized imperfection and incompleteness. With the rise of Protestantism in the 16th century, the idea that 666 embodies the threefold sign of imperfection – and therefore the Antichrist – became established in Western culture.
In his book Histoire universelle des chiffres (Universal History of Numbers), Georges Ifrah recalls that 666 was not originally a symbolic construction but an isopsephy, an assignment of numerical values to letters. The number of the beast, in the sense used in Revelation, could thus have referred, in the original text, to the Roman emperors Nero or Diocletian, both great persecutors of the early Christians. Some interpretations, moreover, associate 616 rather than 666 with the number of the beast. 666 gradually supplanted 616, since the triple 6 was more striking!