Attic numerals were used by the ancient Greeks

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

, possibly from the 7th century BC. They were also known as Herodianic numerals because they were first described in a 2nd century manuscript by Herodian

Aelius Herodianus

Aelius Herodianus or Herodian was one of the most celebrated grammarians of Greco-Roman antiquity. He is usually known as Herodian except when there is a danger of confusion with the historian also named Herodian....

. They are also known as acrophonic numerals because the symbols derive from the first letters of the words that the symbols represent: five, ten, hundred, thousand and ten thousand. See Greek numerals

Greek numerals

Greek numerals are a system of representing numbers using letters of the Greek alphabet. They are also known by the names Ionian numerals, Milesian numerals , Alexandrian numerals, or alphabetic numerals...

 and acrophony

Acrophony

Acrophony is the naming of letters of an alphabetic writing system so that a letter's name begins with the letter itself. For example, Greek letter names are acrophonic: the names of the letters α, β, γ, δ, are spelled with the respective letters: ....

.

Decimal	Symbol	Greek numeral	IPA International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
1	Ι	–	–
5	Π		[pɛntɛ]
10 10 (number) 10 is an even natural number following 9 and preceding 11.-In mathematics:Ten is a composite number, its proper divisors being , and...	Δ		[deka]
100 100 (number) 100 is the natural number following 99 and preceding 101.-In mathematics:One hundred is the square of 10...	Η		[hɛkaton]
1000	Χ		[kʰilioi/kʰilias]
10000 10000 (number) 10000 is the natural number following 9999 and preceding 10001.-Name:Many languages have a specific word for this number: In English it is myriad, in Ancient Greek , in Aramaic , in Hebrew רבבה , in Chinese , in Japanese [man], in Korean [man], and in Thai หมื่น [meun]...	Μ		[myrion]

The use of Η for 100 reflects the early date of this numbering system: Η (Eta

Eta (letter)

Eta ) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet. Originally denoting a consonant /h/, its sound value in the classical Attic dialect of Ancient Greek was a long vowel , raised to in medieval Greek, a process known as itacism.In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 8...

) in the early Attic alphabet represented the sound /h/. In later, "classical" Greek, with the adoption of the Ionic alphabet throughout the majority of Greece, the letter eta had come to represent the long e sound while the rough aspiration was no longer marked. It wasn't until Aristophanes of Byzantium

Aristophanes of Byzantium

Aristophanes of Byzantium was a Greek scholar, critic and grammarian, particularly renowned for his work in Homeric scholarship, but also for work on other classical authors such as Pindar and Hesiod. Born in Byzantium about 257 BC, he soon moved to Alexandria and studied under Zenodotus,...

 introduced the various accent markings during the Hellenistic period that the spiritus asper

Spiritus asper

In the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, the rough breathing , is a diacritical mark used to indicate the presence of an sound before a vowel, diphthong, or rho. It remained in the polytonic orthography even after the Hellenistic period, when the sound disappeared from the Greek language...

 began to represent /h/. Thus the word for a hundred would originally have been written ΗEΚΑΤΟΝ, as compared to the now more familiar spelling . In modern Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

, the /h/ phoneme has disappeared altogether, but this has had no effect on the basic spelling.

Unlike the more familiar Modern Roman numeral system, the Attic system contains only additive forms. Thus, the number 4 is written ΙΙΙΙ, not ΙΠ.

The numerals representing 50, 500, and 5,000 were composites of pi (often in an old form, with a short right leg) and a tiny version of the applicable power of ten. For example, is five times ten thousand.

The acrophonic numerals in comparison to the Roman numeral system.

Ι	Π	Δ		Η		Χ		Μ
1	5	10	5 × 10	100	5 × 100	1000	5 × 1000	10000
			50		500		1000 × 5	1000 × 10
I	V	X	L	C	D	M	V	X

Example:   1982   =   Χ𐅅ΗΗΗΗ . 𐅄ΔΔΔΙΙ   =   MCM . LXXXII.

See also

• Attic numerals in Unicode
• Etruscan numerals
  Etruscan numerals
  The Etruscan numerals were used by the ancient Etruscans. The system was adapted from the Greek Attic numerals and formed the inspiration for the later Roman numerals.There is very little surviving evidence of these numerals...