Assyro-Chaldean Babylonian cuneiform numerals were written in
cuneiform
Cuneiform is a logo- syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedg ...
, using a wedge-tipped
reed stylus to make a mark on a soft clay tablet which would be exposed in the sun to harden to create a permanent record.
The
Babylonians, who were famous for their astronomical observations, as well as their calculations (aided by their invention of the
abacus
The abacus (''plural'' abaci or abacuses), also called a counting frame, is a calculating tool which has been used since ancient times. It was used in the ancient Near East, Europe, China, and Russia, centuries before the adoption of the H ...
), used a
sexagesimal
Sexagesimal, also known as base 60 or sexagenary, is a numeral system with sixty as its base. It originated with the ancient Sumerians in the 3rd millennium BC, was passed down to the ancient Babylonians, and is still used—in a modified form� ...
(base-60)
positional numeral system inherited from either the
Sumerian or the Akkadian civilizations.
Neither of the predecessors was a positional system (having a convention for which 'end' of the numeral represented the units).
Origin
This system first appeared around 2000 BC;
its structure reflects the decimal lexical numerals of
Semitic languages
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant a ...
rather than Sumerian lexical numbers.
However, the use of a special Sumerian sign for 60 (beside two Semitic signs for the same number)
attests to a relation with the Sumerian system.
Characters
The Babylonian system is credited as being the first known
positional numeral system, in which the value of a particular digit depends both on the digit itself and its position within the number. This was an extremely important development because non-place-value systems require unique symbols to represent each power of a base (ten, one hundred, one thousand, and so forth), which can make calculations more difficult.
Only two symbols (