The Babylonian Number System

As we learned in class, the Babylonian Number System is a little bit harder to understand than the Attic-Greek System. The Babylonian system also deals with symbols to represent numbers.

Here is a picture of the Babylonian System to help visualize what it looks like:

The Babylonian Number system is Contextual, positional, and a base 60 system. Contextual means to be determined by or in context. Depending on how many items you are counting, the symbols you are using could stand for higher numbers. In this system, the symbols are positional, which means that the order of the symbols is important. This system is a base 60 system. Base 60 means that the grouping of the numbers is done by 60's. There is also no zero involved in this system.


Here is a link to a website to better explain how the Babylonian System actually works.


Examples: