Cuneiform Numeric Sign Five Gesh2

It records five GEŠ₂ units in a tablet’s number system.

GEŠ₂ is the name of a large counting unit. In some administrative records, five GEŠ₂ units are rendered as 300; the noun or measure tells you whether that quantity is sheep, reed material, or something else.

The sign belongs to an evolved bookkeeping tradition, not a standalone modern digit. Some counting systems later used with cuneiform predate writing. A broader sexagesimal (base-sixty) system appears in Late Uruk texts, early records from the Uruk period. Old Babylonian scribal schools later used metrological tables to organize capacities, weights, areas, and lengths.

Why does 𒐙's value depend on the tablet?

Its value depends on the unit and number system around it.

Across Sumerian and Babylonian settings, related number signs served different measurement systems. In metrological tables, the GEŠ₂ series appears among smaller counting units and leads into larger units called GEŠ'U and ŠAR₂.

Read the sign, sequence, noun, and measure together. On its own, 𒐙 is best glossed as “five GEŠ₂”; a tablet translation converts that through the tablet’s own measurement system.