Ancient nerds. Look at this: an icosahedral die from somewhere between 30 and 300 BCE. Egyptians were throwing d20s back before Jesus worshippers founded the cult that would eventually call D&D satanic.
“You’ll have to roll a θ to hit that lemure, dude.”
O_O
If you squint hard you can almost make out the dorito’s stains.
I must have stone carved, 20 dice…i deserve them….
Everyone knows the pyramids were just giant d4’s.
In the first picture they seem to have rolled a natural Triforce.
Nope. Pyramids are five-sided, and wouldn’t be fair dice.
Damn but that is showing waless wear than my dice from he blue box edition!
I saw this the other day and it made my whole week.
Louis
The Pyramids could be half buried 8 sided dice that would make a whole lot more sense.
Would an omega be a critical hit?
So, alpha is a critical fumble if Omega is a critical hit, right?
That being said, I want a replica pair of these…
How totally cool are those things. Given the amount of work it must have taken to grind a couple of rocks to such geometric precision, they must have been for royalty or the priesthood. I bet the bros working on the pyramids were forced to use cheap, plastic knock-offs.
Sure. the pyramids are unfair dice. Only gods could use them. Would you expect fair throws?
I’m pretty sure omega isn’t on the dice.
Day saved.
Despite being a ghost, a lemure must be a real thing, because st. Augustine believed in them, and he knew theology.
David @12: You know, it never occurred to me before now that the Ancient Greeks must have had their own numeral system. Neat!
Sigh. Wake up, get basic concept wrong on the internet, drink coffee, find out someone’s corrected me. This is a recurring theme in my life.
Since I am an atheist thought leader (I thought I was leading something once) I am instead going to double down on what I said earlier and rip off commenters #s 7 and 11. The pyramids are buried d8’s. Or alien dice because aliens.
So the pyramid-dice somehow landed on a point, then instantly got buried in hundreds of feet of sand? Those ancient aliens do some amazing stuff.
OMENS!! Clues to what is going to happen next. “theta” + “epsilon” == “look behind you!”
.
They only found 2 dice? Maybe they had more and rolling ’em all at once would let them spell out explicit instructions for what to expect tomorrow.
My memory fails; isn’t greek alphabet 20 characters long? so maybe roll 5 of these and spell out a 5 letter word…
There would be little point in being an ancient alien if you didn’t.
@16/18
….something something gravity, something handwave repulsorlift, handwave unobtainium Stargate, handwave, conspiracy, gotcha!
I am soooooo happy to see these.
I’d also be happy to see the cheap plastic knockoffs used by the plebes, of course, but these dice?
They rock.
Greek did not have numerals: they used letters of the alphabet — specifically, the Ionic alphabet, which included letters that were eventually dropped. Alpha through theta meant 1 through 9 (with the archaic letter digamma for 6; you will find it below and to the left of theta in the second picture.) Iota started the series of 10s, with kappa = 20, lambda = 30, and so on until pi = 80 and the archaic letter qoppa = 90. Rho started the series of hundreds, with omega = 800 and the archaic letter sampi = 900. Being a d20, it would have characters for 1-9, 10-90, 100, and 200. A pair would give a roll of 2-400; I’m not sure about the distribution curve, but it would be interesting to find out.
Most likely, the die was used for oracular purposes: roll several dice, add up the result, then look up the number in a reference book.
And I should have read Dave’s response before posting.
I have some stone dice, bone dice, and bronze dice, but they are all d6. I want a stone d20.
/unlurk
Huge dice worshipper/addict/nerd here, anyone looking for dice made out of stone (mostly semi-precious stones) should a google (or bing or whatever) Crystal Caste Dwarven Stones. I would put a link here but I’m not sure if commercial links are okay.
Anyway, have fun spendind all your money ;-)
/relurk
I forgot the most important thing, sorry:
those ancient dice are waaay cooler than anything I have, and now I am afraid I must have replicas, resin would be okay, but stone… Sigh, one can dream.
fpjeromeiv @2 and PZ @4
I’m sure if you dig, you’ll discover that the pyramids are half-buried d8s.
Great, and here I was trying to convince myself that rolling d20s does not make me seem *that* old…
But did they find the rulebook? I want to see the (really) first edition D&D, written in hieroglyphics!
Those dice are cool.
There’s nothing new under the sun…
Those are beautiful.
Nah, the rules in hieroglyphics would be a copy and(probably) translation. The original rulebook was taken back by the ancient astronauts who helped them build the half-buried d8’s, and now is back in the Sirius star system.
It is beautiful. The craftsmanship is frighteningly good.
azhael:
Here ya go!
–
Some interesting thoughts here:
– Was Alexander the Great a killer DM, or did he fall more along Monty Hall lines?
– Were the rules for Divine Intervention just, “Yell ‘Yo Zeus, how’s about saving my fighter from that demilich?'” and then waiting for a bolt of lightning?
– Will WotC coast be sued for using Socrates patented d20 rules for 3rd edition?
– What was Plato’s take on munchkins?
– Did Aristotle have any useful tips on balancing high level encounters, or did they just stop playing at about level 10?
– What was Pythagorus’ recorded response to his first view of a d10?
No, that’s just the alpha again.
How cool! I too am very impressed with the hand carving skills evident in the straight edges and crisp outline of the numbers. I then noticed that only some of the 20 symbols are visible in those photos and went looking for more information. Voila, there is a company called shapeways that makes replicas of this die. Their description is as follows
I would have included a snarky comment about them being the perfect thing for casting lots but the price is very reasonable so I won’t quibble.