Aside from their use in the early treatises on the new art of reckoning, the numerals appeared from time to time in the dating of manuscripts and upon monuments. The oldest definitely dated European document known {138} to contain the numerals is a Latin manuscript,[556] the Codex Vigilanus, written in the Albelda Cloister not far from Logrono in Spain, in 976 A.D. The nine characters (of [.g]ob[=a]r type), without the zero, are given as an addition to the first chapters of the third book of the _Origines_ by Isidorus of Seville, in which the Roman numerals are under discussion. Another Spanish copy of the same work, of 992 A.D., contains the numerals in the corresponding section. The writer ascribes an Indian origin to them in the following words: "Item de figuris arithmetic[e,]. Scire debemus in Indos subtilissimum ingenium habere et ceteras gentes eis in arithmetica et geometria et ceteris liberalibus disciplinis concedere. Et hoc manifestum est in nobem figuris, quibus designant unumquemque gradum cuiuslibet gradus. Quarum hec sunt forma." The nine [.g]ob[=a]r characters follow. Some of the abacus forms[557] previously given are doubtless also of the tenth century. The earliest Arabic documents containing the numerals are two manuscripts of 874 and 888 A.D.[558] They appear about a century later in a work[559] written at Shiraz in 970 A.D. There is also an early trace of their use on a pillar recently discovered in a church apparently destroyed as early as the tenth century, not far from the Jeremias Monastery, in Egypt. {139} A graffito in Arabic on this pillar has the date 349 A.H., which corresponds to 961 A.D.[560] For the dating of Latin documents the Arabic forms were used as early as the thirteenth century.[561] On the early use of these numerals in Europe the only scientific study worthy the name is that made by Mr. G. F. Hill of the British Museum.[562] From his investigations it appears that the earliest occurrence of a date in these numerals on a coin is found in the reign of Roger of Sicily in 1138.[563] Until recently it was thought that the earliest such date was 1217 A.D. for an Arabic piece and 1388 for a Turkish one.[564] Most of the seals and medals containing dates that were at one time thought to be very early have been shown by Mr. Hill to be of relatively late workmanship. There are, however, in European manuscripts, numerous instances of the use of these numerals before the twelfth century. Besides the example in the Codex Vigilanus, another of the tenth century has been found in the St. Gall MS. now in the University Library at Zuerich, the forms differing materially from those in the Spanish codex.