Cuneiform Numeric Sign Three Gesh2

It records three geš₂ units: 180 in the standard base-60 system. Geš₂ is the scholarly name for the sixty-unit place; the written 3 multiplies that place. It is not the ordinary cuneiform sign for three.

Read it with the nearby noun or measure. A published edition of Mesopotamian administrative accounts reads 3(geš₂) udu as 180 sheep; another unit changes what the 180 counts.

It began as accounting, then became a number-system sign

The earliest complete Mesopotamian cuneiform system is attested in the Uruk IV period, around 3500–3200 BCE. Uruk was a Mesopotamian city; its early writing served urban administration and recorded quantities and commodities.

The script spread from Sumer into Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, and other cuneiform traditions, with local variations. Scribes pressed a cut reed into clay and adapted the inherited signs for measurement, mathematics, and administration. The geš₂ series belongs to a larger numerical system that includes the geš'u and šar₂ ranks. AŠ and DIŠ are separate numerical series, not forms of this sign.

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