Disc decorated with lions and gazelles
Medium:Limestone
Geography: Undetermined site, Upper Egypt
Date: c. 3100-2890 BC
Period: Protodynastic or 1st Dynasty, Early Dynastic Period
Dimensions:2.2 x 2.2 x 10.8 cm
Object number: 909.80.44
Gallery Location:Galleries of Africa: Egypt
Description
This broken disk, with two donkeys and one lion
remaining from its decoration, may originally have been part of a game. A set
of forty-four similar disks was found at Sakkara in the tomb of a powerful First
Dynasty courtier named Hemaka. Hemaka’s
disks were made of many different materials, including various stones, copper,
ivory, and wood. They were found in a decayed wooden box together with small sticks that were used as 'dice'. Walter
Emery, the excavator of Hemaka’s tomb, suggested that the disks and sticks
formed part of a game whose rules and play have been lost to time. Our disk is worn as well as broken, thicker,
and not of as fine a quality as the Sakkara set, but may have come from a
similar set of game pieces.
