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List of Contents  
The German author and retired math and art teacher Ulrich Vogt (*1941) wrote a book entitled “Der Würfel ist gefallen – 5.000 Jahre rund um den Kubus“/“The Die is Cast – 5.000 Years Around the Cube“. Published in October 2012, it is the first book in the German language on this special subject. On 192 DIN-A4-pages with more than 1.000 excellent color photos the dice’ history is told in many small really exciting stories.
    As early as 5.000 years ago, people in Persia played with six-sided dice with spots from 1 to 6. Also the egyptian pharao Tutanchamun and the ancient Greeks and Romans played with so called astragals which are four-sided small bones from the ankle-joints of cloven-hoofed animals (sheep, goats or deer). In those times government institutions or, later on, churches had to make every imaginable effort to dam this often unrestrained passion and compulsive gambling, although emperors, kings, aristocrats and high church dignitaries could be found among these endangered gamblers.
 		 When Julius Caesar in the year 49 AD spoke the famous sentence “Alea iacta est – The Die is Cast” before crossing the river Rubicon in Italy many of our European ancestors already knew dice gambling and played it with high passion. The Roman historian Tacitus for instance described 150 years later in his book “Germania” that especially men of ancient German tribes in dice gambling were even ready to risk their personal freedom in the very last throw and to go into slavery after a lost game.
     From the hidden, mostly secret gambling-dens in Old England to the huge fascinating casinos in Las Vegas, historical dice scenes are described. Dice as tattoos or piercing, dice in fashion design or in mathematics or language games, the story palette in this book is multifarious and colorful. Great entertainment for kids and adults!
  

Ulrich Vogt
Der Würfel ist gefallen - The Die is Cast
    5000 Jahre rund um den Kubus - 5000 Years Around the Cube

Alea iacta est – The die is cast   7

Which die was it?   12

Antique lead, bronze, stone and  wood dice   14

Antique ivory, horn and bone stick dice   18

Antique ivory, horn and bone six sided dice   20

Dice throwing for "the robe" of crucified Christ   22

Astragaloi – the Greek dice game with knucklebones   26

Knucklebones - bones in the ankles of cloven-hoofed animals   28

Antique "Knucklebones" made of various materials   30

Where children still play with knucklebones   32

Knucklebones in Pieter Brueghel's „Children Games“   34

Ivory knucklebones in the tomb of Tutanchamun   36

The clay dice of the Egyptian master-builder Sennedjem   40

Dice used in "The Royal Game of Ur"  44

The five Platonic solids   46

Dice geometry: The eleven nets of a six sided die   48

Dice geometry: Only two nets are correct   49

Golden pyrite crystals – nature's dice wonder   50

Natural crystals - the wonderdice   52

When Teutons gambled with dice for freedom   54

Dicemakers during the Middle Ages   58

Murillo's „Boys playing Dice“   62

Dice on stamps   63

The Frankenburger "Life or Death" dice game   64

The gothic scene: Life is a gamble   66

The God's dice game: "Coincidence or Destiny"   68

Dice in the modern fashion scene   70

Albert Einstein: „God does not play dice.“   71

Prayer dice for Christians and Moslems  72

Dreidels – dice for the Jewish "Festival of Light" (Chanukka)   74

Put and take and teetotum dreidels   77

Lucky or unlucky dice: This life ’s a gamble!   78

A lavish dice game for the Schenkenschanz fortress   80

The "German Kaiser's" last throw   82

What if generals and politicians had gambled, using dice?   83

A dice game is a devil's game   84

"Gaming House", "Dog from Hell" and "Rokoko Couple"   86

Calculating the probable outcome of a dice game   88

Lotto – a dice game with 49 small gameballs   90

Roulette – rien ne va plus   91

Football-Toto – also a "dicey-game“  92

Casino dice – no chance for cheats   96

Precision dice – "A Seven-Day-Wonder" among dice   97

The latest Casino dresscode - wearing a "lucky dice cravatte"   98

Soldiers fight, booze and throw dice   100

Soldier's boots used as dice cups   102

Dice games in prisoner of war camps   103

Dice cups and dice cages   104

 

 




The pub - the lost paradise of dice players   106

What shall we have to drink?   108

Smoking area dice lighters   110

Smoke dice and dice ashtrays   111

Sweet dice for dessert   112

… or would you prefer  salt dice from Bolivia?  113

Decision dice: meal, TV, cinema or sex?   114

Dice design in fashion accessoires   115

Dice jewellery - jewellery dice   116

Key rings in a multi-purpose dice format   117

Dice on buttons and stickers   118

Every day items in dice format   119

Learning languages, read and calculate with dice   120

Which is faster, a calculator or a dice game?   122

Throwing dice with binary numbers   126

Changing of binary dice numbers into decimal dice numbers   128

Changing of decimal dice numbers into binary dice numbers   129

Dice towers   130

A world record holder: The ROVO dice machines   132

Dice machines activated by pressing a button   134

… also under glass and plastic domes   135

Shoot, roll, chuck and shake ’em!   136

… or to gamble electronically?  138

Dice slot machines: When the penny drops   140

Dice robots: Who wins, dice or machine?   144

Advertising dice   146

Backgammon – a dice game conquers the world   148

Gambling with Yahtzee, Yatzy, Yamsi, Yam or Kniffel   152

„Das Spiel/The Game“: How to build a dice pyramid  154

Pig dice as lucky charms   155

Small pigs as luck symbols on postcards   156

Horse's hoovers on postcards for luck   157

Four-leaf-clovers, lucky souvenirs from paradise   158

Toadstool - a poisonous luck-drug   159

Fuzzy Dice – soft cloth-dice for tough men  160

Breaking through the speed barrier with lucky dice   162

No luck for Jimmy Dean   164

Dice in tattoos   166

Dice in piercing   170

Crap shooting – from the streets into the casinos   172

Las Vegas – Par-a-dice of dice   176

Las Vegas – controlled by film stars and the Mafia   178

Dice souvenirs from a gambler's paradise   180

From Touch-Dice to the Braille-Alphabet   182

Parfum dice and dice parfum   184

Seeing dice everywhere   185

Dice design - the most beautiful dice in the world   186

… and even more beautiful dice   187

Links to dice pages in World Wide Web    191

                                                            
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