As a mathematician I have always been interested in the number systems and the methods for simple calculation used by other cultures and by earlier civilizations.   Some systems, such as the Egyption, used symbols that did not lend themselves to easy arithmetic.  The Egyptions had to develop extensive "lookup" tables even for addition and subtraction (to say nothing of multiplication and division).  Only highly educated scribes performed arithmetic in the Egyptian culture.  Other systems, such as the arabic numbers we use today, are straightforward, and every young child learns to do arithmetic.

An earlier culture that had an intuitive system for writing numbers was the Mayan.  "One" was a single dot, "four" was four dots in a row, "five" was a horizontal bar, "nine" was a horizontal bar with a row of four dots above it, and "seventeen" was a stack of three horizontal bars with two dots on top.  Mayan arithmetic was not as easy as with our modern system but was much easier than for the Egyptians.

I selected a piece of my hand-dyed cotton whose colors looked rocklike and which already had places where the mottled dyes gave dimensionality I could expand upon.   Then I used dyesticks to add considerable shading to form the glyph.   The quilting provides the sharp definition that represents the carved lines.