TALLYING IN THE EANNA

The present contribution presents a previously unidentified and unique tallying system found on Late-Babylonian tablets from the Eanna temple archive. The tallies are composed of a series of nine vertical wedges, grouped in triplets, followed by a Winkelhaken. The vertical wedges can stand for either 1 or 10, and the Winkelhaken concludes the series as either 10 or 100, respectively. So far, this system is attested only on administrative tablets from the Eanna from the first two decades of Nebuchadnezzar II's reign (ca. 604–585 BCE). While the tally system itself is unique, the grouping, or chunking, of verticals in triplets suggests Aramaic influence.