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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tarchon" data-source="post: 1251603" data-attributes="member: 5990"><p>The Egyptians didn't use Greek letters for numbers.  Hellenistic civilization in general used Greek numbers for numbers.  Greek numbers originated from Greek letters, but by the Hellenistic period, the number system and the alphabet had diverged, so that the number system used 3 symbols that had long since disappeared form the alphabet, stigma, koppa, and sampi (sometimes called digamma, qoppa, and sampi in earlier times).  The litmus test for whether symbols in an epigraphic context are letters or numbers is the presence or absence of these three symbols.  If the die has 20 letters from alpha to upsilon, they must be letters (and thus probably either simple ordinals or possibly index codes).  If they are true numbers, they should run from alpha to kappa, including a distinct stigma and an iota-stigma.  Roman numerals can be used as either ordinals or cardinals, so if we find both Greek letters and Roman numerals in this context, it is logical to suppose that the symbols function as ordinals, since one set of symbols is known not to have a cardinal function and the other can go either way.</p></blockquote><p></p>