Marble (toy) in Codd-neck bottles, which were often collected for play. In the early twentieth century, small balls of stone, identified by archaeologists as marbles, were found on excavation near Mohenjo-daro. Marbles are often mentioned in Roman literature, as in Ovid's poem "Nux" (which mentions playing the game with walnuts), and there are many examples of marbles from excavations of sites associated with Chaldeans of Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt. They were commonly made of clay, stone or glass. Marbles arrived in Britain, imported from the Low Countries, during the medieval era. In 1503 the town council of Nuremberg, Germany, limited the playing
Arundel marbles Ancient Greece as standard units of measure. Another important object from Arundel's collection is the so-called Arundel Head, an Hellenistic bronze portrait of a philosopher or king from Asia Minor now in the British Museum. The Arundel marbles were catalogued as early as 1628, when, at the suggestion of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton, John Selden compiled a catalogue: "Marmora Arundeliana" with the assistance of two others, Patrick Young and Richard James. In 1763 Richard Chandler published a fine edition of the inscriptions as "Arundelian Marbles, Marmora Oxoniensia" with a Latin translation, and a number of suggestions for filling the lacunae