Assyria’s glory (“forest,” or people) will diminish to the point that a relatively uneducated child, who cannot count very high, will be able to enumerate them. In Hebrew, Greek, and Roman writing systems, there were no numbers. Instead, letters were used to indicate numbers. In the Hebrew system: “Each letter in the Hebrew alphabet (or aleph-bet) has a numerical value. The first 10 letters (consonants actually) have the values 1–10. The next 9 letters are valued 20, 30,… 100. The remainder are valued 200, 300, and 400.” Our numerical system is taken from the Arabic system that was adapted from the Indian system. The cultures of the Middle East were not in significant contact with India. The Arabic discovery of this system is first noted in A.D. 662. Thus, in Hebrew, large numbers were not formed simply by adding more zeroes, but rather by using different letters and symbols. For example, the number 764 in Hebrew is: תשסד. The value is calculated as 400 (ת) + 300 (ש) + 60 (ס) + 4 (ד) = 764.