Roman Bone Dice

Posted by Joseph Allen McCullough Jun 16, 2008

For my birthday this year, my wife got me something really cool: a Roman bone die. Not a reconstruction, or a copy, or anything like that, but an actual die used by the Romans, probably for gambling. It’s a little thing, about the size of small dice that often come in board games today. It is much smaller than a penny. The surface is dark brown, and the pips (the dots) are actually carved like little targets with a centre dot surrounded by a circle. Like all modern six-sided dice, the number of pips on opposite faces of the die add up to seven.

It is not very evenly carved, and I doubt any modern gambler would be enthusiastic about using it, but I suppose you had to go with what you could get back in the day. The Romans carved thousands of dice and lost many of them down drains where they are commonly dug up today.

Although the Romans were famous dice players, they were not the first. It is impossible to say for sure who carved the first dice. The ancient Greeks played with them as did the Ancient Egyptians. Possibly the oldest dice known to exist were found in the Egyptian Tombs at Ur. These were little pyramidal dice that were found as part of a board game and probably date to around 3,000 BC.

As for me, I’ll be wrapping up my die carefully and placing it within my portable writing desk for safe keeping. It is the first piece in my small, personal museum.