The Royal Game of Ur (2600 - 2400 BC)
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The Royal Game of Ur, also known as the Game of Twenty
Squares, refers to an ancient game represented by two gameboards found in the Royal Tombs of Ur in Iraq by Sir Leonard
Woolley in the 1920s. The two boards date from the First Dynasty of Ur, before 2600 BC, thus
making the Royal Game of Ur one of the oldest examples of board gaming
equipment found, although Senet boards found in Egyptian graves predate it as much as
900 years. The Ur-style Twenty Squares gameboard was also known in Egypt as
Asseb, and has been found in Pharaoh Tutankhamen's
tomb, among other places. Discovery of a tablet partially describing the
gameplay has allowed the game to be played again after over 2000 years,
although reconstructions of the detailed rules have differed widely.
One of the two boards from Ur is exhibited in the
collections of the British Museum in London.[1]
Gameplay
The Royal Game of Ur was played with two sets, one black and
one white, of seven markers and three tetrahedral
dice. After around 1000
BC, the layout of the twenty squares was altered to make the end course for the
markers a straight line. The rules of the game as it was played in Mesopotamia
are not completely known but there have been a number of reconstructions of
gameplay, based on a cuneiform tablet of Babylonian
origin dating from 177–176 BC by the scribe Itti-Marduk-Balāṭu. It is
universally agreed that the Royal Game of Ur, like Senet, is a race game.
Both games may be predecessors to the present-day backgammon.
Graffito boards
A graffito version of the game was
discovered on one of the human-headed winged bull gate sentinels from the palace of Sargon II
(721–705 BC) in the city of Khorsabad,[1]
now in the British Museum in London (see illustration). Similar games have
since been discovered on other sculptures in other museums.
Rules tablet dated 177 BC (British Museum ref:33333,b )
A graffito version of the game in the British Museum in London
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