Mysterious hieroglyphs written in red paint on the floor of a hidden chamber in Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza are just numbers, according to a mathematical analysis of the 4,500-year-old mausoleum.

The number 1888081808881 is interesting on several counts. First, it’s a prime number, evenly divisible only by itself and 1. In base 10, it’s also a palindromic number. It has the same sequence of ...