comScore
  1. Mediaite
  2. Gossip Cop
  3. Geekosystem
  4. Styleite
  5. SportsGrid
  6. The Mary Sue
  7. The Jane Dough
  8. The Braiser

+2 Cha -2 Str

The World’s Oldest Twenty-Sided Die Won’t Roll a 20 For You

by Susana Polo | 2:26 pm, November 8th, 2012


Because it doesn’t have Arabic numerals on it. io9 hypothesizes that this die (and another in the same collection) that dates from the Ptolemaic Period (that’s roughly between 300 and 30 BC) is the oldest D20 in the world.

So you could role a circle with a little dash in it, or a capital H, P, N, E, B, U, K, I or even a triangle.

But not a 20.

(via Nerd Approved.)

Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?

Previously in Dice

TAGS: | |


  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Bexley-Lister/100000454520033 Bexley Lister

    Those are Greek letters, surely? So Theta, Eta, Rho, etc… They weren’t playing D&D, they were playing Scattergories. ;-)

  • Sanjay Merchant

    Either that or they were inventing calculus with polar coordinates?

  • Katie Jarriel

    Nerd alert: Greek writing actually uses letters as numerals, too. So Alpha = 1, Beta = 2, etc. So you could roll a natural 20 and/or slay that dungeon boss.

  • http://zadl.org/ Captain ZADL

    IIRC, there was a secret society of early mathematicians who saw the shapes we associate with D&D dice as sacred, and kept the 12 sided to themselves for seeeeeecreeet riiiiiituallllssss……

  • Canisa

    So it has the letters H, P, N, E, B, U and K? Each one has a 1/20 chance of being rolled, and any particular 4 letter sequence has a 1/20^4 chance of being rolled, so I have just one question for you…

    Do you feel lucky, P, U, N, K?

    Well, do ya?

  • Anonymous

    Fun fact: the number zero only dates back to 700AD (or at least, that’s when it became en vogue).

X