Set of twelve red terracotta balls

Set of twelve red terracotta balls

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

These terracotta balls may be game tokens. Based on only a few representations of people seated at a table with some sort of game board, they could have been used in a game resembling checkers or backgammon. Various gaming pieces, especially pairs of dice, were often part of Etruscan tomb furnishings.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Set of twelve red terracotta ballsSet of twelve red terracotta ballsSet of twelve red terracotta ballsSet of twelve red terracotta ballsSet of twelve red terracotta balls

The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than thirty thousand works ranging in date from the Neolithic period (ca. 4500 B.C.) to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. It includes the art of many cultures and is among the most comprehensive in North America. The geographic regions represented are Greece and Italy, but not as delimited by modern political frontiers: Greek colonies were established around the Mediterranean basin and on the shores of the Black Sea, and Cyprus became increasingly Hellenized. For Roman art, the geographical limits coincide with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The department also exhibits the art of prehistoric Greece (Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan) and pre-Roman art of Italic peoples, notably the Etruscans.