K.2069: a reciprocal table from the library at Nineveh
Tablet K.2069 shows how reciprocal numbers were written in Nineveh’s base-60 system. The tablet’s age is not the date when the method was invented.
The numbers on K.2069
The British Museum's record for K.2069 describes a Neo-Assyrian mathematical reciprocal table from Kouyunjik, the mound of Nineveh, dated to the seventh century BCE. Reciprocal tables listed the numbers needed to turn division into multiplication in the sexagesimal system. British Museum ↗
An artifact date is not an origin date
The research record treats the tablet as strong material evidence for reciprocal-table computation at that date, and adds that wider claims about continuity from earlier Babylonian traditions require explicit transmission evidence. The practice is older; this tablet proves it was alive in seventh-century Nineveh.
What would connect two tablets?
Compare this tablet with Plimpton 322, more than a thousand years older. What would you need to connect them: shared number formats, identical table layouts, or a documented scribal lineage?
Reference, exercise, or archive curiosity?
A library tablet can be a reference copy, a school exercise, or an archival curiosity. Which features of the object itself would tell you which?