I'm so astonished and impressed with this kind of work. When I look at that tablet all I see are a bunch of triangle impressions like scales. I wonder how it is read.
http://thumbs.media.smithsonianmag.com//filer/67/a8/67a8aa02...
http://thumbs.media.smithsonianmag.com//filer/67/a8/67a8aa02...
Imagine looking at the handwriting of thousands of different people writing a script you don't understand. Some people are sloppy, some precise. Everyone has their own distinctive way of writing and you have to figure out exactly which differences in the characters are actually meaningful. Add in the fact that the writing samples you have span several centuries and changes in writing style and language occurred over that time. Deciphering a script like that is a staggeringly difficult task.
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
The supplementary materials give a full transcript of the tablet you linked (one of several):
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2016/01/27/3...
> 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.
Apparently mathematicians haven't changed much in millennia :)
For a general and short introduction to cuneiform I would suggest http://www.amazon.com/Cuneiform-Reading-Past-C-Walker/dp/052... (other books in the Reading The Past series are excellent, too).
Or, if you're interested in other type of ancient writing in general, there's a nice Mayan Hieroglyph workbook online (pdf: http://www.famsi.org/mayawriting/hopkins/MayaGlyphWritingWrk...). It's a great way to waste an afternoon!
(It's pronounced cune-iform, apparently, rather than cune-ay-ee-form with a diphthong)
/kjuːˈniːᵻfɔːrm/ kew-NEE-i-form or /ˈkjuːnᵻfɔːrm/ KEW-ni-form
Even a little web browsing wasted a lot of time. It lead me to read about word dividers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_divider
IMAGINEIFWEDIDNOTUSESPACESATALL! OR·WRITING·WITH·INTERPUNCTS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpunct
Also Zlango was going to be the new writing system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lango_%28app%29
I seems smartphones have killed it.
http://www.open.edu/openlearn/ocw/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=...
Edit: Here's an audio interview with Mathieu Ossendrijver on this research. The interview starts at the 20:30 mark