For the love of God, we know about the Roman d20!

[Vaxalon]

A very good point but it supports my position at least as well as it does yours....
The Romans didn't use A,B,C etc for numbers, so when the Romans copied the Greco-Egyptian game, they also included their numbers on the die, I, II, III etc. But for the Egyptians who used Greek letters for numbers, there was no need for any other kind of numeration. For them, the letters were numbers. If, as you contend, the game required ordinals only, there would not have been the need for the Romans to number their die. After all, the Romans would have known the order of their letters just as well as the Greco-Egyptian knew theirs, so the Roman die would have gone A,B,C without I,II,III.

A Roman MIGHT have lettered the die, given that the number 18, being written XVIII, wouldn't fit very well on a die face.

 

[tarchon]

A very good point but it supports my position at least as well as it does yours....
The Romans didn't use A,B,C etc for numbers, so when the Romans copied the Greco-Egyptian game, they also included their numbers on the die, I, II, III etc. But for the Egyptians who used Greek letters for numbers, there was no need for any other kind of numeration. For them, the letters were numbers. If, as you contend, the game required ordinals only, there would not have been the need for the Romans to number their die. After all, the Romans would have known the order of their letters just as well as the Greco-Egyptian knew theirs, so the Roman die would have gone A,B,C without I,II,III.

The Egyptians didn't use Greek letters for numbers. Hellenistic civilization in general used Greek numbers for numbers. Greek numbers originated from Greek letters, but by the Hellenistic period, the number system and the alphabet had diverged, so that the number system used 3 symbols that had long since disappeared form the alphabet, stigma, koppa, and sampi (sometimes called digamma, qoppa, and sampi in earlier times). The litmus test for whether symbols in an epigraphic context are letters or numbers is the presence or absence of these three symbols. If the die has 20 letters from alpha to upsilon, they must be letters (and thus probably either simple ordinals or possibly index codes). If they are true numbers, they should run from alpha to kappa, including a distinct stigma and an iota-stigma. Roman numerals can be used as either ordinals or cardinals, so if we find both Greek letters and Roman numerals in this context, it is logical to suppose that the symbols function as ordinals, since one set of symbols is known not to have a cardinal function and the other can go either way.

 

[tetsujin28]

Merak,
They're for auction on Ebay.

The Ebay auction gives details, but to answer your question: yes, that's a rhomboid d12!

According to the Louvre museum in Paris, the d20 for auction on Ebay is based on an Egyptian one. The one for auction at Christies was brought back from Egypt as well. It could be Roman, but my feeling is that the Louvre is right. Both the Ebay one and the Christies ones are probably Egyptian. The Louvre claims the Ebay one is Ptolemaic (323 - 30 BC). It's possible, but I have my doubts about that. I suspect it's later, perhaps when the Romans had more influence in Egypt, hence the confusion.

There's nothing keeping it from being Roman and Egyptian.

 

[tetsujin28]

merge all!

Form Voltron!

 

[rpgHQ]

Quote:
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Originally Posted by Zander
I already have a set of the Louvre dice
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Are those sold online anywhere?

Actually I have seen a number of ceramic replicas of many anceint d12s and d20s, d12's seem to be more prevelant in uses, zodiac and all that jazz. From celts all the way down into asia minor lots of the funky polyhedrals.

When I did some web searches on polyhedrals I came up with a lot of references to dodecahedron, d12's. Seems a lot of the ancients had a thing for it and deemed it the foundation/essence of the universe and even now adays theres a popular theory among scientists on the shape of the universe being dodecahedron. But then again all those ancients had a thing for geometry and time and time again modern day scientists seem to end up basically saying the same thing. Funny how that works, as if we cant justify the science of folks from 2 to 6 thousand years ago because us 'modern' man is superior and the ancients came about their results more from a philosophical approach than from hard science. But yet we end up validating their words time and time again. But of course the ancients did have a lot of hogwash mixed in with their mathmatical truths. Doesnt seem we are really getting anywhere new over the last few thousand years, all we are doing is relearning what others had already discovered, validating what has already been said, just in more precise 'scientific' terms. Ok I am starting to ramble now hehe...

Interestingly enough, alot of my searches pulled up pages, essays, and discourses on cell structure, atoms, molecules and the like.

Makes you wonder how much knowledge we lost when the great libraries of the ancient world were destroyed, like in Alexandria. How for the most part we're just rediscovering and validating what man already learned.

 

[der_kluge]

Way I figure it, we all donated like $14,000 dollars to ENWorld couple of months ago. Morrus himself said he didn't exactly know what he'd do with all of it. I think ENWorld needs to own that dice.

At the very least, I hope someone from Chessex buys it, and they make replicas of it to sell at GenCon.

 

[barsoomcore]

Makes you wonder how much knowledge we lost when the great libraries of the ancient world were destroyed, like in Alexandria. How for the most part we're just rediscovering and validating what man already learned.

Right. We're probably playing 278th Edition. Or 278.5, I guess.

Except for diaglo, of course.

 

[tetsujin28]

Yeah, he's still stuck in the Dark Ages. Oops...I mean, 'Late Antiquity'

 

[rpgHQ]

hehe you would think he would have responded to your quips on him by now, he must be polishing his vomit spoon or whatever the romans used to call it while thinking of a comeback, or did they just stick their fingers down their throats in those vomitoriums(forget if thats what their called or not)? hey wait a minute college kids and models still practice that roman custom dont they? hehe for different reasons but still ....

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

All right, I'm making this damn thread sticky so that people stop starting new threads about it. We're at about 14.

Hmmm, judging by the title of this thread I should be able to make a thread about the Egyptian d6.