Cuneiform Number-Syllabaries Author(s): Laurie E. Pearce Source: Iraq, Vol. 45, No.

1, Papers of the 29 Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, London, 5-9 July 1982 (Spring, 1983), pp. 136-137 Published by: British Institute for the Study of Iraq Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4200190 Accessed: 11/08/2010 18:29
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136 CUNEIFORM NUMBER-SYLLABARIES By LAURIE E. PEARCE A study of the cryptographic cuneiform texts * brought to light a small group of A brief description texts which pair numerals with syllabic signs. of the corpus and observations about the texts follows. preliminary written in standard sexagesimal Each of the texts pairs numerals notation with the A (Sa). I call these texts number-syllabaries. All of the numbersigns of Syllabary are in a late hand ; some are datable to the Seleucid period by the cursive syllabaries are known or suspected form of the numeral nine. All of the exemplars to have come from Babylon.2 MMA Rm. 806,4 BM 47732 The corpus consists of these texts: 86.11.364,3 BM 77233, BM 466o3( +)466og. Each of these, except BM 77233, dupli+48191, cates part of at least one of the other fragments. is the largest MMA and most complete of the number86.11.364 exemplar The pattern of its entries, numeral?dis?syllabic for syllabaries. sign, is standard the other texts. This pattern clearly differs from the one in lexical texts, where the dis sign indicates of each entry. MMA 86.11.364 the initial component preserves each Sa sign only once, and not the number of times it appears in Sa. BM 47732 It duplicates + 48191 is the largest of the BM number-syllabary pieces. BM 47732 + 48191 the Metropolitan Unlike the latter, however, text in two places. numbers as many times as the sign repeats the syllabic signs and their corresponding forms appear in Sa. Rm. 806 duplicates BM 47732 It cannot be + 48191 as well as MMA 86.11.364. as they appear in Sa, as the determined whether Rm. 806 listed signs as frequently on this small fragment occur only once in Sa itself. signs preserved BM 46603 and 46609. These two pieces arc probably Rm. 806 also duplicates from the same tablet, and are the only epigraphic texts fragments number-syllabary BM 466o3( +)466og shares one numeral-sign known at the present time. sequence with BM 47732 +48191. as they appear in Sa. BM 77233 preserves the syllabic signs as frequently The following observations may be made about these texts : that there was only one system of pairing numerals and signs. First, it is probable statement to that effect. me from making a categorical Only BM 77233 prevents themselves shows that they in no way of the numerals Second, simple inspection reflect the ordering of Sa signs. That is, the numbers paired with the signs do not run Nor are the numbers grouped from lower to higher values. to according sequentially mathematical principle. any apparent 1 Laurie E. Pearce, Cuneiform : Cryptography Numerical Substitutions Syllabicand Logographic for Signs. (Ph.D. Thesis, Yale University, 1982). 2 BM 77233 is a Sippar number. But E. Leichty and C. B. F. Walker have informed me that the text belongs to a small group of Babylon texts which are numbered in with the Sippar material. 3 For permission to study this text, I thank the late Dr. Vaughn Crawford and Dr. Ira Spar of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Dr. Spar will publish this text in the complete publication of texts in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 4 Professor A. Sachs identified this fragment as well as MMA 86.11.364 and BM 47732 (before the join) as belonging to this category of text.

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of the Sa signs shows us that the scribes Third, the repetition (or lack of repetition) of the number-syllabaries were concerned only with the sign form, and not the values possible for each sign. If the latter were the case, the scribes would multiple have assigned a different numeral to each repetition of the Sa signs and would not have produced abbreviated such as MMA 86.11.364, where each sign form is lists, once. given only The number-syllabaries of the sign lists or the may be related to the organization of this basic document to some more abstract level of thinking. application Although their function is not yet understood, it is safe to assert that they are unlike the numerical substitutions for logographic names, colours, signs (such as divine colophon and geographical No attestation of one of these numeral-sign terminology points). has been found in context. of pairings (substitutions?) They may be handbooks some sort, but it is unlikely that any truly secret writing was accomplished with their help.