Page:Smith - Number Stories of Long ago (1919).djvu/35

 done when you made mud pies as children, and in this damp clay he wrote his numbers.

All this was still long before money was invented and long before paper was made. The few people who could write at all made letters by pressing with a pointed stick on pieces of damp clay, the clay being then dried in the sun.

𒐕𒐖𒐗𒐼𒐙𒐚𒑂𒑄𒑆𒌋 BABYLONIAN NUMERALS Babylonian figures for the numbers from one to ten as they appear on the ancient clay tablets

Because the signs looked like little wedges they were called cuneiform (kṹ nē’ĭ fôrm) signs, a word meaning “wedge-shaped.”

This does not seem to us a very good way to write numbers, but it was the only way that Lugal knew. There was no book about arithmetic in those days, and boys and girls worked hard all day in the fields or shops instead of going to school.

While Chang and Lugal were learning their curious ways of writing numbers in China and Babylon, there lived in the valley