So the right hand column is units, the next is tens, the next is hundreds, and so on. We use a positional system, and our columns represent powers of ten. Surely this is very confusing! However, the Babylonians were working their way towards a positional system (see below).Ī positional number system is one where the numbers are arranged in columns. Sixty one is sixty and one, which therefore looks like one and one, and so on. The symbol for sixty seems to be exactly the same as that for one. However, something strange happened at sixty (see below). Eleven was ten and one, twelve was ten and one and one, twenty was ten and ten, just like the Egyptians. Once they got to ten, there were too many symbols, so they turned the stylus on its side to make a different symbol. However, they tended to arrange the symbols into neat piles. Like the Egyptians, the Babylonians used two ones to represent two, three ones for three, and so on, up to nine.

I am using a yellow background to represent the clay!Įnter a number from 1 to 99999 to see how the Babylonians would have written it, or enter a number to count with. This explains why the symbol for one was not just a single line, like most systems. The Babylonians writing and number system was done using a stylus which they dug into a clay tablet. Eventually it was replaced by Arabic numbers. It is quite a complicated system, but it was used by other cultures, such as the Greeks, as it had advantages over their own systems. It started about 1900 BC to 1800 BC but it was developed from a number system belonging to a much older civilisation called the Sumerians.

Babylonian numerals names