Salamis Tablet
The Salamis Tablet is a marble counting board (an early counting device) dating from around 300 BC, that was discovered on the island of Salamis in 1846. A precursor to the abacus, it is thought that it represents an ancient Greek means of performing mathematical calculations common in the ancient world. Pebbles () were placed at various locations and could be moved as calculations were performed. The marble tablet itself has dimensions of approximately 150 × 75 × 4.5 cm. Discovery Originally thought to be a gaming board, the slab of white marble is currently at the Epigraphical Museum in Athens. Description Five groups of markings appear on the tablet. The three sets of Greek symbols arranged along the left, right and bottom edges of the tablet are numbers from the acrophonic system. In the center of the tablet – a set of five parallel lines equally divided by a vertical line, capped with a semicircle at the intersection of the bottom-most horizontal line and the single vertical line. Below a wide horizontal crack is another group of eleven parallel lines. These are divided into two sections by a line perpendicular to them but with the semicircle at the top