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Decoding Device, 5th Century BC

Dry Dock

Dry dock at 205 BC (Athenaios Deipnosophistes.)

Dice and Pessoi

Dice (kyboi) and astragaloi

Sophocles claimed dice were invented by Palamedes during the siege of Troy c. 1200 BC? Palamedes of Argos some say invented eleven letters of the alphabet or, as others say even sixteen. Palamedes is assumed to have discovered counting and coinage, weights and measures (attributed also to Hermes), military ranks , the lighthouse and the game of pessoi (a forerunner of chess). Palamedes was killed directly or indirect by Odysseus, the son of Laertes and Anticlea. Herodotus attributed the discover of the dice to the Lydians in the reign of Atys. Probably dice were known and invented independently in various places back up to 6000 BC. Romans believed that Fortuna the daughter of Zeus decided about the outcome of a throw. Egyptians believed that their god Theuth invented dice and also numbers, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, etc.

Behind figures of heroic legend often stand real men.... As for Palamedes, the Greeks especially knew one thing about him: he was so clever that he devised a way to write down Greek speech.... In Palamedes we may have found the adapter's very name.... We cannot separated the recording of early hexametric poetry from Homer... Homer sang his song and the adapter took him down. From this momentous event came classical Greek civilization and its achievements. B. B. Powell, Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)