artical excerpt:
It turns out that there were nerds back in ancient Egypt. In 2012, the Metropolitan Museum of Art put some pictures online of the oldest known 20-sided die and shook the Dungeons & Dragons community to its core (not really, but we are going for dramatic effect here, people). The d20 was certainly popularized by the pen-and-paper RPG, but it's worth noting that these things have been around for thousands of years. Literally millennia, guys.
D20