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I think you are referring to the Arabic numbering system which is positional. That is to say that each column represents an increasing power of 10 as one moves from right to left.

This was a major departure from other numbering systems for the purposes of performing math (as opposed to just indicating a number).

The Hebrew alphabet (aleph-beis) is a non-positional numbering system in which every letter is assigned a value - aleph - 1, beis - 2, lamed - 30, etc. Here what might appear as a word might actually be a number (since it is unusual to see Hebrew written with vowels).

These Hebrew numbers are often used in Gematria which maps words to numeric values so that additional insight might be gained into the deeper meaning. In Hebrew, the word for wine and the word for secret have the same numeric value and from this stems the expression "when the wine goes in, the secrets come out".

I believe that the Greeks followed the Hebrew pattern where alpha - 1, beta - 2, lambda - 30, etc.

The Greeks via the Christians, performed a similar process on their words for similar reasons.

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