If you thought ancient Romans were cool, with their back alley dice games, check out the Egyptians who were rolling the d20 thousands of years before fighting off giant dragons was a gleam in Gary Gygax’s eye.
The dice pictured above dates somewhere between 304 and 30 B.C. during the Ptolemaic Period. Of course back then, people were actually fighting dragons and demons on a daily basis, so I have absolutely no idea what the Egyptians used the die for, but the RPG type game has been around for much longer than people believe, at least according to the book, “Playing the World” by Jon Peterson.
The dice are now part of a collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
6 Comments
Wait what..?
At last! The mystery of where all my dice get to is solved, damn wormholes, if anyone needs me I’ll be searching art musemes for my odd socks.
“Of course back then, people were actually fighting dragons and demons on a daily basis, so I have absolutely no idea what the Egyptians used the die for”
They were imagining that they were brave cubicle dwellers, fighting off the evils of some fantastical monsters called corporate management.
Good one!
The Kingdom was never the same after the 3.5th dynasty.
I think DnDBrian needs Ptolemaic dice….