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> But we took the numbers from Arabic and kept their left-to-right order and now write them from MSD to LSD...

roman numbers were already “big endian”, though.

Most significant digit first probably makes the most sense because you can immediately skip past the number after you identify the magnitude (the number of digits can be seen in the periphery of your vision without being read).

My understanding is that in Arabic numbers were also left-to-right which facilitated a left column left-aligned with values and then a right column that with a right-margin with the descriptions. Thus both columns were aligned (for easy scanning and summing) and extra space was in the middle of the page.

"but our writing of numbers comes from Arabic"

Not India?

Yes, India. Where they were writing left to right.

So the Persians picked them up and put them in their right-to-left text, so little-endian for them, and then Europeans picked them up from the Persians, all as-is. Little-endian would make typesetting columns of figures simpler, but that ship sailed long ago.