The origins of numerical knowledge of Russia (7th–8th centuries)

This article analyses the content of a counting tag (10th century) and of a writing on the birch bark №715 (13th century) found in Novgorod. The counting tag and the writing on the birch bark belong to the magic type of talisman and incantation, which indicates their archaic character. Both artifacts display numerical knowledge which goes back to some prototypes of the 7th–8th centuries from the region of the Northern Black Sea and the Sea of Azov (located to the south-east of what will become the Kievan Rus in the 9th century). Both sources are of a considerable value because their content suggests that the inhabitants of this region were in the 7th–8th centuries familiar with the Greco-Byzantine numbering system consisting of 27 letters. Authentic “bookkeeping” writings using this numbering system from the region have been preserved from the 9th–10th centuries.