Die
Description
Dice. Roman Period, 30 B.C.–A.D. 330. Ivory. 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9 cm (3/8 x 3/8 x 3/8 in.). From: Oxyrhynchus (Bahnasa), Middle Egypt, Egypt. Excavation: EEF excavations 1896–97. Credit: Gift of Egypt Exploration Fund, 1897.
AI image analysis GPT-5.4-nano
Machine-generated from the object's image on Jul 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.
Small ivory cube/rectangular block with painted or inlaid dark circular motifs on multiple faces.
The object appears as a small, ivory-colored, geometric block (roughly cube-like) photographed against a light background. Several faces show clusters of dark, ring-like dots/circles arranged in partial groups; one face has a central larger dark ring with smaller surrounding circles, while adjacent faces show additional circular marks. There are no clearly legible hieroglyphs, cartouches, or alphabetic text visible in the image. The surface shows age-related discoloration and speckling consistent with ivory. No deities or royal names are identifiable from the visible markings, which read more like decorative/figurative dot patterns than Egyptian iconography. The catalogue description as a “Die” is consistent with the object’s shape and the dot-like arrangement resembling dice pips.
About this record's data
- From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Metropolitan Museum of Art — Egyptian Art (Open Access).
- AI-inferred — the image-analysis panel (deities, names, signs) is machine-generated and may be wrong.
- Approximate location — most map points are plotted at the site centroid, not the exact findspot.
- Inferred links — cross-references marked with a match method other than explicit-source-field were matched by us, not stated by the source.