 Although YBC 7289 is frequently depicted (as in the photo) with the square oriented diagonally, the standard Babylonian conventions for drawing squares would have made the sides of the square vertical and horizontal, with the numbered side at the top.The small round shape of the tablet, and the large writing on it, suggests that it was a "hand tablet" of a type typically used for rough work by a student who would hold it in the palm of his hand.The student would likely have copied the sexagesimal value of the square root of 2 from another tablet, but an iterative procedure for computing this value can be found in another Babylonian tablet, BM 96957 + VAT 6598.