20 sided Egyption dice from 200 B.C



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    egnilk66

    That’s a single die.

    Greenman037

    Roll for initiative.

    przxqgl

    1. it’s singlar: a die, not “dice”, which is more than one die.
    2. “Egyption” is misspelled: it should be “Egyptian”.
    3. however, it’s Greek, not Egyptian.

    apart from that, cool! 😉

    tiki god

    neeeerd

    przxqgl

    🤪 🤙

    pb104

    However much I disagree with it, the Oxford English Dictionary refers to “dice” as the singular unit. en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/dice

    Further, more and more I am seeing “dice” being used in the singular and, as a gamer of forty years, it confuses the heck out of me.

    przxqgl

    my Websters International Dictionary, 1907 edition, says “Dice (dis), n.; plural of DIE. Small cubes used in gameing or in determining by chance.” and “Die, n.; A small cube, marked on its faces with spots from one to six, and used in playing games by being shaken in a box and thrown from it. See DICE.”

    strangely enough, it doesn’t say anything about dice with more than 6 faces…

    pb104

    This is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA. Here’s what they have to say about it:

    Twenty-sided die (icosahedron) with faces inscribed with Greek letters. Dimensions: Height: 3.2 x L: 3.8 x W: 3.4 cm (1 1/4 x 1 1/2 x 1 5/16 in.). Date: 2nd century B.C.-4th century A.D.. A number of polyhedral dice made in various materials have survived from the Hellenistic and Roman periods, usually from ancient Egypt when known. Several are in the Egyptian or Greek and Roman collections at the Museum. The icosahedron – 20-sided polyhedron – is frequent. Most often each face of the die is inscribed with a number in Greek and/or Latin up to the number of faces on the polyhedron. Nothing specific about the use of these polyhedra is preserved, so theories are built on clues provided by some variant examples. One unusual example uses Greek words, a few of which resemble those associated with throws of the astragals (knucklebones), and this has led to suggestions they were used for games. Another remarkable example discovered in Dakhleh Oasis in Egypt in the 1980s records an Egyptian god’s name in Demotic (the Egyptian script of these late periods) on each face. Divination – seeking advice about the unknown from the supernatural – seems to be the most likely purpose for the Dakhleh die: the polyhedron might have been thrown in order to determine a god who might assist the practitioner. Indeed, even the dice with simple letters might relate to divination: a Greek oracle book composed in in the 2nd or 3rd century AD refers to throwing lots to obtain a number that would, through certain algorithms, lead to ready-prepared oracle questions and responses.

    Gropegrope

    Here’s the Egyptian one:

    przxqgl

    while it would be amusing, that would be a substantially bigger die.

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