To win, players raced their opponent to the opposite end of the board, moving pieces according to knucklebone dice rolls. Its shape, consisting of a 4- by 3-panel block connected to a 2- by 3-panel block by a “bridge” of two squares, is “reminiscent of an unevenly loaded dumbbell,” according to It’s All a Game. The Royal Game of Ur, however, uses 20 squares rather than 30. This game board, now housed at the British Museum, is structured similarly to Senet boards, with three rows of squares placed in parallel rows. Woolley unearthed five boards, the most impressive of which featured shell plaque squares encircled by strips of lapis lazuli and decorated with intricate floral and geometric designs. The roughly 4,500-year-old game’s modern rediscovery dates to Sir Leonard Woolley’s excavation of the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur’s Royal Cemetery between 19. Researchers often struggle to determine the rules of games played millennia ago.īut thanks to an unassuming cuneiform tablet translated by British Museum curator Irving Finkel during the 1980s, experts have a detailed set of instructions for the Royal Game of Ur, or Twenty Squares. This roughly 4,500-year-old board features shell plaque squares encircled by strips of lapis lazuli and decorated with intricate floral and geometric designs. “The final space represented Re-Horakhty, the god of the rising sun,” explains Donovan, “and signified the moment when worthy souls would join Ra for eternity.” The Royal Game of Ur Players believed that Senet revealed what obstacles lay ahead, warned dissolute souls of their fiery fates, and offered reassurance of the deceased’s eventual escape from the underworld, as represented by successfully moving one’s pieces off the board. The ancient Egyptians believed “ritualistic” gaming sessions provided a glimpse into the afterlife, according to Tristan Donovan’s It’s All a Game: The History of Board Games From Monopoly to Settlers of Catan. Pieces that landed in square 27’s “waters of chaos,” for example, were sent all the way back to square 15-or removed from the board entirely. Piccione in the journal Archaeology, Senet evolved into a “simulation of the netherworld, with its squares depicting major divinities and events in the afterlife.”Įarlier game boards boast completely blank playing squares, but in most later versions, the final five squares feature hieroglyphics denoting special playing circumstances. Originally a “pastime with no religious significance,” writes Egyptologist Peter A. This Senet board dates to between roughly 13 B.C.Ĭharles Edwin Wilbour Fund / Brooklyn Museum As in most complex strategy games, players had the opportunity to thwart their opponent, blocking the competition from moving forward or even sending them backward on the board. Rather than rolling dice to determine the number of squares moved, participants threw casting sticks or bones. Two players received equal numbers of gaming tokens, usually between five to seven, and raced to send all of their pieces to the end of the board. Senet boards were long and lithe, consisting of 30 squares laid out in three parallel rows of ten. Those with fewer resources at their disposal made do with grids scratched on stone surfaces, tables or the floor. Archaeological and artistic evidence suggest it was played as early as 3100 B.C., when Egypt’s First Dynasty was just beginning to fade from power.Īccording to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, upper-class members of Egyptian society played Senet using ornate game boards, examples of which still survive today.

This ancient Egyptian Senet board is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.īeloved by such luminaries as the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun and Queen Nefertari, wife of Ramesses II, Senet is one of the earliest known board games. From Go to backgammon, Nine Men’s Morris and mancala, these were the cutthroat, quirky and surprisingly spiritual board games of the ancient world. And 5,000 years ago, in what is now southeast Turkey, a group of Bronze Age humans created an elaborate set of sculpted stones hailed as the world’s oldest gaming pieces upon their discovery in 2013. To the east in India, Chaturanga emerged as a precursor to modern chess. Farther south, the ancient Egyptian games of Senet and Mehen dominated. Long before Settlers of Catan, Scrabble and Risk won legions of fans, actual Roman legions passed the time by playing Ludus Latrunculorum, a strategic showdown whose Latin name translates loosely to “Game of Mercenaries.” In northwest Europe, meanwhile, the Viking game Hnefatafl popped up in such far-flung locales as Scotland, Norway and Iceland.

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