This blog was adapted from an original post by Steven James Walker that he wrote about an article that appeared on i09 (and other sites) about the "earliest" d2 die. http://io9.com/5958203/is-this-the-oldest-d20-on-earth. My thoughts? They didn't need the die because they were living Dungeons and Dragons in real time!.
Steven James Walker writes:
So this thing about a 3rd century BCE twenty sided die popped up in my feed.
The article claims it to be oldest ever d20. Well, it isn't, but it is still pretty cool. The one that appeared on i09 and seems to be making the rounds today was acquired by the Met in 1910, and they have three of roughly the same antiquity (check the 'related objects' on this page: http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/551072?&imgno=0&tabname=related-objects).
A (very quick) bit of sluthing has revealed very little research on these kinds of objects has been done, but a non-peer reviewed paper seems to have a pretty good list of such things and where they are housed: http://www.mgu.bg/sessions/14/04/4-KostovP2014.doc
Their function does not appear to be creating character attributes for role playing however, which is frankly unfortunate.
If you like, this may be of interest: https://www.pinterest.com/ThLapidary/games-dice-in-history/
