From http://www.livescience.com/53518-babylonians-tracked-jupiter-with-fancy-math.html http://www.livescience.com/53518-babylonians-tracked-jupiter... > "It's

From http://www.livescience.com/53518-babylonians-tracked-jupiter-with-fancy-math.html http://www.livescience.com/53518-babylonians-tracked-jupiter... > "It's not an actual trapezoid that describes the shape of a field, or some configuration of the planets in space," Ossendrijver told Live Science. "It's a configuration in a mathematical space. It's a highly abstract application." > "Actually, this particular tablet has ugly handwriting," Ossendrijver said. "It's slanted. It's like cursive if it were written very rapidly. It's very abbreviated. He left out everything that is not absolutely necessary to follow the computation." You can read the details here: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6272/482.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6272/482.full The supplementary materials give a full transcript of the tablet you linked (one of several): http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2016/01/27/351.6272.482.DC1/Ossendrijver.SM.pdf http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2016/01/27/3... > 1 The day when it appears: 0;12, until 1,0 days, 0;9,30. > 2 0;12 and 0;9,30 is 0;21,30, times 0;30 > 3 is 0;10,45, times 1,0 is 10;45. > 4 After completing 1,0 days, until 1,0 days 0;1,30. > 5 0;9,30 and 0;1,30 is 0;11, times 0;30 is 0;5,30. > 6 0;5,30 times 1,0 days is 5;30. (erasure) 10;45 and 5;30 is > 7 16;15, the total. From appearance until station the motion is 16;15. The actual trapezoid is mentioned in another tablet, which is also translated. To see how the numerals actually work, just look up Babylonian Mathematics. It's a pretty simple base-60 system.