Editing Abacus (section)

===Mesopotamia===
The [[Sumer]]ian abacus appeared between 2700 and 2300&nbsp;BC. It held a table of successive columns which delimited the successive orders of magnitude of their [[sexagesimal]] (base 60) number system.<ref>{{harvnb|Ifrah|2001|p=11}}</ref>

Some scholars point to a character in [[Akkadian language|Babylonian cuneiform]] that may have been derived from a representation of the abacus.<ref>{{harvnb|Crump|1992|p=188}}</ref> It is the belief of Old Babylonian<ref>{{harvnb|Melville|2001}}</ref> scholars, such as Ettore Carruccio, that Old Babylonians "seem to have used the abacus for the operations of addition and subtraction; however, this primitive device proved difficult to use for more complex calculations".<ref>{{harvnb|Carruccio|2006|p=14}}</ref>