first, simple example... here Z_7's elements exponentiated 6 times, where 6 is the group order: 1,1,1,1,1,1 2,4,1,2,4,1 3,2,6,4,5,1 4,2,1,4,2,1 5,4,6,2,3,1 6,1,6,1,6,1 there is only one number coprime with 6, which is 5, and above, in the 5'th column you can see all the group elements exponentiated by 5, and the sequence is unique {1,4,5,2,3,6} - so no matter what element we pick, SOME other element to the 5'th power will equal it but how to prove it for general cases? this will be a joke to any real math person, but here it goes.. since Z_p is a cyclic group, there is some generator g such that {g,g^2,...,g^(p-1)} is all the members of Z_p p-1 is of course the number of elements in the group (its order) and some people will write the above generator sequence as {1,g,g^2,...,g^(p-2)} (we just moved the g^(p-1) up to the front) so suppose we exponentiate every element of the group by e, gcd(e,p-1)=1 then the elements of the group can be written in terms of the generator as: {1,g^e,g^(2e),...,g^((p-2)e)} i want to show that this is all unique elements (the group itself), so that like the example, any element we pick can be written as an element to this exponent e to do this, assume that it is NOT true, that there is a pair of members that are equal in {1,g^e,g^(2e),...,g^((p-2)e)} that means that there is some a,b with 0<=a<=(p-2) and 0<=b<=(p-2) and a!=b such that: g^(ae) = g^(be) (mod P) just two elements of Z_p written in terms of the generator and exponentiated by e by Lagrange's theorem, this is true only when: ae = be (mod p-1) here is the important part! since gcd(e,p-1)=1 then e has a multiplicative inverse and can be cancelled from this equation, leaving: a = b (mod p-1) and since we picked a,b less than or equal to p-1, and not identical, this is a contradiction, meaning that our initial assumption that two elements can be identical is false thus, again, the elements of the group Z_p exponentiated by e generate the unique elements of the group Z_p, so no matter which one we pick, it is reachable by some other element raised to the e power