4th millennium BC. A fragment of a ceramic sexagesimal 'counting' tablet for barley or another commodity, the number in dots and lines representing the commodities, in sexagesimal notation; the division line possibly representing a field-plan to show what is planted in the field. 32.8 grams, 48mm (2"). Part of a specialised collection of cuneiform texts, the property of a London gentleman; examined by Professor Wilfrid George Lambert FBA (1926-2011), historian, archaeologist, and specialist in Assyriology and Near Eastern archaeology, in the late 1980s and early 1990s; this small collection is exceptional for the variety of types, including some very rare and well preserved examples. These 'numerical' or 'counting' tablets are a step forward in counting as correspondence. They were used in parallel with the bulla envelopes that contained tokens. The commodity counted is not shown in this example but gradually the pictographic system developed to incorporate this information into the tablet with a simple picture of the commodity, i.e the development into ideonumerographical tablets, the forerunner to the pictographic tablet. There are less than 300 of these tablets known, generally found in Iran.