The numerals employed by cuneiform scribes to express numbers may be traced directly back to the sexagesimal numerals of the earliest protocuneiform tablets at the end of the fourth millennium B.C.E. As exemplified by the typical Old Babylonian period (circa 1894 - circa 1595 B.C.E.) numerals below, in the sexagesimal cuneiform system every number from 1 to 599 can be written with the correct relative placement of combinations of just two types of wedges, the vertical wedge for digits and the corner wedge ("Winkelhaken") for tens. Additional signs were used for 600 and 3600.

1	10	40	90
2	11	50	100
3	12	60	110
4	13	61	120
5	20	62	121
6	21	70	130
7	22	71	131
8	23	72	180
9	30	80	600
			3600

In nonmathematical texts special numerals represent 100 and 1000:

100	1000
200	3000
300	3333

In both mathematical and nonmathematical texts from the Seleucid and Parthian periods during the last three centuries B.C.E., a sign formerly used as a word separator occasionally came to represent "zero":

0