> Another quirk is that much of it was highly contextual. e.g. Depending on context, the same numerals might indicate N, N x 60, N x 60^2, etc..

You mean, like "1" can mean one, ten, one hundred, one thousand, ... or one-tenth, one-hundredth... depending on the context of other digits and an optional decimal?

Yeah, I guess it could take months to learn the ten digits of our current system.