Dice as Oracles: Rolling Yes or No in the Ancient World

Dice are some of the oldest gaming objects people have made, and for much of their history the line between playing a game and asking the gods was thin. Here is what archaeology and ancient texts actually show about dice as games and as oracles, and how the same idea ended up in today's dice rollers.

Before dice: knucklebones

Long before carved cubes, people threw the ankle bones of sheep and goats, called astragali in Greek. An astragalus is roughly box-shaped and can come to rest on four of its sides, each of which looks different, so it works as a natural random device. Greeks and Romans used knucklebones both as toys and as a way of drawing lots. When they were scored, the four sides counted as 1, 3, 4 and 6; there is no 2 or 5 on a knucklebone.

Knucklebones were linked with Hermes, the god of luck, lots and messages. A knucklebone found at Sha'ar Ha-'Amaqim in northern Israel, from the late third or early second century BC, even has his name scratched into it.

The first dice

Some of the best-known early dice belong to the Royal Game of Ur. The British Museum's game board from the Royal Cemetery at Ur, in what is now southern Iraq, dates to about 2600-2400 BC. The game was played with four-sided, pyramid-shaped dice rather than cubes.

The cube with one to six pips, the shape we still use, turns up at Indus Valley cities such as Harappa and Mohenjo-daro in the third millennium BC. Some archaeologists think the cubic die may have first become common there, though early finds from other regions mean the question of where dice were "invented" has no single answer. Claims you may see online that dice or dice-based fortune telling go back tens of thousands of years are not supported by the evidence.

Dice oracles in the Roman Empire

The best evidence for dice as an actual oracle comes from the second century AD, in the hill towns of south-western Anatolia (modern Turkey): Lycia, Pamphylia, Pisidia and Phrygia. There, communities set up large inscribed stone blocks that worked like a self-service fortune teller.

The visitor threw five knucklebones (sometimes seven) and looked up the result on the stone. Because each bone can show 1, 3, 4 or 6 and only the combination mattered, five bones give 56 possible throws, and the inscriptions list an answer for each, written as a few lines of Greek verse that name a god and tell the enquirer what to expect or whether to go ahead. These oracles were closely tied to Hermes. The historian Johannes Nollé collected all the known inscriptions in a 2007 book, and together they show ordinary people using chance to get a quick, divine-sounding answer.

Dice also turn up in the most famous decision in Roman history. According to the biographer Suetonius, when Julius Caesar led his army across the Rubicon in 49 BC he said "the die is cast". He meant that the throw had been made and the result was out of his hands.

From fate to fairness

A study by the archaeologists Jelmer Eerkens and Alex de Voogt, published in Acta Archaeologica, measured 110 dated dice from the Netherlands, from the Roman period to modern times. Roman dice were very variable in shape and size, and many were visibly lopsided. A follow-up study by the same researchers in 2022 found that some Roman dice had one side more than 50% longer than another, which would make some numbers come up more often than others. Their conclusion was that Roman players simply did not see a perfect cube as essential, which fits the idea that a throw was read as fate rather than as a fair random event. Medieval dice from about 1100 onward mostly used a "primes" layout, with 1 opposite 2, 3 opposite 4 and 5 opposite 6.

Around 1450 that changed quickly. Dice became more regular cubes, and the layout switched to the "sevens" arrangement we still use, where opposite faces add up to seven. The authors suggest players may have started to see a throw less as a sign of fate and more as a matter of chance that ought to be fair. Mathematicians were heading the same way: the letters between Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat in 1654, written to solve gambling problems, are usually seen as the start of probability theory.

Rolling dice for decisions today

Dice moved from oracles to games, and then into a new kind of game. Dungeons & Dragons, first published in 1974, made polyhedral dice such as the 20-sided d20 familiar to millions of players, who use them to decide whether an action succeeds.

The decision-making use is simpler and still works:

  • Up to six options: number your options and roll one six-sided die. With fewer than six, reroll any number that has no option.
  • Yes or no: decide in advance that odd means yes and even means no, or that 4-6 is yes.
  • Weighted choices: give a favourite option more faces, for example 1-4 for pizza and 5-6 for curry.
  • Many options: roll two dice or a d20 for longer lists.

One thing to keep in mind is that sums of several dice are not evenly spread. With two six-sided dice, a total of 7 comes up six times as often as a 2 or a 12, so do not map options to totals if you want each one to have the same chance. Our dice probability charts show the exact odds. For other ways to break a deadlock, see how to make a decision when you can't decide.

If you have no dice to hand, our online dice roller rolls one to six fair dice in the browser. No knucklebones or stone tablets required.

Sources

FAQ

How old are dice?

Dice are at least about 4,500 years old. The Royal Game of Ur, from around 2600-2400 BC, used four-sided dice, and cube dice with pips are known from Indus Valley sites in the third millennium BC. Before that, people threw animal knucklebones.

Did ancient people use dice to tell the future?

Yes. In the second century AD, towns in south-western Anatolia set up stone oracles where you threw five knucklebones and read the answer for your throw from an inscribed list.

Why do opposite sides of a die add up to seven?

It is a convention, not a law of nature. Medieval dice often paired 1-2, 3-4 and 5-6. The sevens layout became standard in Europe from around 1450, along with more regular, fairer cubes.

How do I use dice to make a decision?

Number your options, roll one die and reroll any number without an option. For yes or no, agree beforehand that odd is yes and even is no.

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