Tessera was the ancient Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 equivalent of a theater ticket. Stamped into a clay shard was an entrance aisle and row number for spectators attending an event at an amphitheater or arena. Above the doors of the Colosseum

Colosseum

The Colosseum, or the Coliseum, originally the Flavian Amphitheatre , is an elliptical amphitheatre in the centre of the city of Rome, Italy, the largest ever built in the Roman Empire...

in Rome are numbers corresponding to those stamped into a spectator's tessera. Tesserae frumentariae and nummariae were tokens given at certain times by the Roman magistrates to citizens, in exchange for which they received a fixed amount of corn (wheat) or money.