Playing Cards and Dice Found on 1281 Mongol Fleet Ship Wreck off Takashima Island

Off the island of Takashima in Japan, 29 playing cards and five dice have been found on a sunken ship of the Mongol fleet. The vessel apparently perished in 1281, during the Battle of Koan, when the fleet of the Chinese Yuan dynasty attempted to invade Japan. The ship is about 30 metres long and had living quarters, and researchers consider it the flagship of the fleet. Two more ships of this armada were found in the same area in 2011 and 2015.

The cards were intended for the game of koppai, which came from China. The head of the excavations, Professor Yoshifumi Ikeda of Kokugakuin University, says that these cards are regarded as the forerunners of mahjong tiles and were used for entertainment

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O'Keeffe's 1930 landscape, kept in a closet for forty years, to be offered at Christie's on 17 November

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O'Keeffe's 1930 landscape, kept in a closet for forty years, to be offered at Christie's on 17 November

Sleeping guards in Prospero Fontana’s “Resurrection of Christ” at the Accademia di San Luca

Archaeologist Miles Russell calls Verica a woman, but his arguments fail to convince

Brass combination lock from the Anne Francis, wrecked in 1583, raised off Wales and its code read by scanning