The Gemara Yerushalmi (ירושלמי שקלים פ"ו סוה"א) brings an argument of Tannaim regarding the writing on the Luchos. Some say there were 5 commandments on each tablet. some say 10 one each, some count 20, and others reckon even 40 on each side!
The commentators grapple with this baffling Gemara. R. Yaakov Ibn Chaviv, author of the famed compilation of Aggadic texts "Ein Yaakov" writes a long treatise on this Gemara (עין יעקב ח"ב בסוף, ירושלמי שקלים פ"ו פיסקא ל), concluding with a detailed drawing of exactly how it looked.
The Ein Yaakov's approach is a more pragmatic approach, taking the words of the sages literally as an argument and explaining it so. R. Menachem Azarya of Fano (עשרה מאמרות ח"ב פ"כ) vehemently argues with R. Chaviv, claiming that his depiction is foolish "and any child (not G-d) could have written that!" He takes a different approach, claiming that this was a G-dly writing completely incomprehensible to the human mind. He explains that all four opinions agree how it was written, rather they are referring to different aspects of it:
The Luchos were 6x3 tefachim. On every 3-tefachim side (4 total), 5 commandments were written. On the larger 6-tefachim sides (2 total), 10 commandments were written. Thus, when the two tablets were placed alongside each other on their "shorter" sides, 10 commandments total could be read. However, if you count the commanments written on the big side of each tablet, each had 10. If you count BOTH long sides, each had 20. If you count ALL sides, each had 40. Thus, anyone present - no matter where he was standing - could see all 10 commandments from G-d.
עשרה מאמארות ח"ב ממאמר חקור הדין פ"כ
ועי' תיו"ט אבות פ"ה מ"ו
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