When I looked at the description of these terracotta game pieces (also referred to as tokens or counters) I felt a little offended on their behalf: ‘incised with a crude human face’, it reads. ‘Crude?!’, I huffed indignantly. I say this partly as a joke – I suppose they are not as polished or intricate as other designs, and that is merely an observation – but not entirely. It stayed with me enough to trigger several ponderings, which had already been brewing for some time, about what we mean by certain words when we talk about art and crafts, and to what extent the value or admiration we attach to these objects might at times be governed by an idea of sophistication or complex craftsmanship that feels arbitrary and more than a little slippery.

The game pieces were found at the site of Sahri Bahlol (also known as Seri Bahlol, Sahr-i-Bahlol) in what is today Pakistan, and date to sometime between the 2nd and 4th century, so they are between 1600 and 1900 years old. Sahri Bahlol was a small fortified city located 5 km from the Buddhist monastic complex of Takht-i-Baki founded in the 1st century AD.

I knew very little about this area of the world during this period, so I found out a bit more about the ancient region of Gandhara, and specifically about the Kushan Empire, which is when these were created. The period coincides with significant contact with the Mediterranean world and is when some of the first representations of the Buddha in human form were created.

The area was in continual use until the 7th C AD, and the ruins of both Sahri Bahlol and Takht-i-Baki have been on the Unesco World Heritage List since 1980 – those at Sahri Bahlol are currently threatened by urban expansion in the area.

These little faces are now in storage at the Victoria & Albert Museum, which acquired them from the collection of Colonel DH Gordon. According to the short biography provided on the British Museum website, Gordon was a well-known soldier and archaeologist working for many years in colonial India. Among other things, he presented collections of stone tools from sites in India to the Institute of Archaeology (University College London) in the 1950s which were subsequently donated to the British Museum.

After a bit of searching, I saw that Gordon’s collection is in fact now distributed across several museums in the UK. The British Museum collection includes several other finds from the same site and date, like for instance this female figure made from terracotta, and another figure with clasped hands (here I remarked on the interesting way in which the mouth is incised and how different elements of the body and have been synthesized into simple lines). This terracotta mould is very different in character and shows a more elaborate style.

Items from DH Gordon’s collection held at the V&A Museum include a terracotta head with traces of something akin to a smiley face, also with ring-like eyes, whereas the Horniman Museum has several items from DH Gordon’s collection from Sahri Bahlol that are classed as toys – there is a figure of a bull, and my favourite, a figure of a seated monkey decorated with lines of dots (also with very round eyes). I note the Horniman says ‘As for most animal figurines, this one is more likely to be a child's plaything than anything more significant.’ Again, I might have felt a little huffy about this too.

We do not know what these game pieces were used for, but I particularly like the use of circled dots for wide eyes in all of them. They are essentially the same as the circled dots commonly carved into dice (among other things) over many centuries. Take a look at these Roman period dice at the Met (Egypt, 30 BC-330A), or these 1st-2nd C dice at the British Museum; jump backwards and look at some of the squares in the Royal game of Ur (2600-2400BC), and then forwards to this gaming piece from the 11th-12th Century AD.

There is a related concentric circle design used in dice and gaming pieces, which features an additional one or two circles – this lovely gaming die in the Metropolitan Museum collection, also from Gandhara and from a similar time (1st-3rd C AD) as these little faces, is a good example of this design.  

The circled dot is an ancient symbol that has been and is used in wide-ranging contexts – to represent the Sun, as a mathematical operator and as an amulet against the evil eye, just to pick out a few – but it tickles me especially that when it depicts an eye, our connection to the object immediately becomes much more tangible. We don’t need all the facial features to be drawn for us to understand these pieces on some level; we assign meaning to the expressions – that one looks surprised (they all do a little, eyes so wide!), that one looks more menacing, that one looks confused.

I thought I would take a look at the earliest known depictions of human faces, and came across the wonderful face at the Grotte du Visage (dating to around 27,000-25,000 years ago), which made use of the existing shape of the rock, as many cave paintings do; and the face at the Grotte de Bernifal (15000-10000 years ago), eyes staring out at us beautifully and vividly. I also enjoyed coming across what is thought to be the world’s oldest ‘smiley’, which decorates a Hittite jug from around 4000 years ago.

I thought about how we lay claim to things around us by drawing faces like ours on them – now we can even buy packets of googly eyes to stick on random things so we can giggle for a while.

Perhaps these game pieces were decorated like that for a specific reason, and they needed to be human faces for the game to work, or perhaps they were like that because someone felt like doodling a bit. I like that they are all different.

Did the players each get one, and always choose a favourite one? If so, dibs on the small orange one at the bottom! It looks like it would have a Muppet-like voice to go with it.