Babylonian sexagesimal mathematics

In the early second millennium BCE, Mesopotamian scribes learned writing and calculation on clay tablets. Students pressed wedge-shaped signs with reed styluses, copied numerical tables and worked through multiplication, reciprocals and area problems. Tablets from places such as Nippur preserve demonstrations, exercises and corrections. Training prepared scribes to record land, grain and other supplies, while school problems also developed mathematical skills through carefully arranged sequences of increasing difficulty.

References: [1]

In sexagesimal notation, adjacent positions differ by a factor of sixty. The same signs can therefore serve at different numerical scales. Sixty is divisible by many small integers, allowing common fractions to enter calculations conveniently. Old Babylonian numbers generally required context to establish their magnitude and fractional position. Multiplication and reciprocal tables supplied reusable results, which scribes combined with the quantities and operations described in each problem.

References: [1]

Mathematical texts considered field dimensions, areas, excavation volumes and allocated shares. Problems set unknown quantities within several stages of calculation, often using land, bricks or labor as their setting. Later Mesopotamian astronomers used sexagesimal numbers in tables of cycles and positions. Dividing angles into minutes and seconds, and hours into sixty-based units, continued through Greek, Arabic and European scholarship, with notation and applications changing along the way.

References: [1]