Royal Game of Ur

The Royal Game of Ur, also known as the Game of Twenty

Squares or simply the Game of Ur, is a two-player strategy race Royal Game of Ur
board game that was first played in ancient Mesopotamia during the
early third millennium BC. The game was popular across the Middle
East among people of all social strata and boards for playing it have
been found at locations as far away from Mesopotamia as Crete and
Sri Lanka. At the height of its popularity, the game acquired spiritual
significance, and events in the game were believed to reflect a player's
future and convey messages from deities or other supernatural beings.
The Game of Ur remained popular until late antiquity, when it
stopped being played, possibly evolving into, or being displaced by,
an early form of backgammon. It was eventually forgotten One of the five gameboards found
everywhere except among the Jewish population of the Indian city of by Sir Leonard Woolley in the Royal
Kochi, who continued playing a version of it until the 1950s when
Cemetery at Ur, now held in the
they began emigrating to Israel.
British Museum (1928,1009.378 (htt
The Game of Ur received its name because it was first rediscovered ps://www.britishmuseum.org/resear
by the English archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley during his ch/search_the_collection_database/
excavations of the Royal Cemetery at Ur between 1922 and 1934. search_object_details.aspx?objecti
Copies of the game have since been found by other archaeologists d=8817&partid=1))
across the Middle East. The rules of the Game of Ur as it was played
Years active Earliest boards date
in the second century BC have been preserved on a Babylonian clay
to c. 2600 – c. 2400
tablet written by the scribe Itti-Marduk-balāṭu. Based on this tablet
and the shape of the gameboard, British Museum curator Irving BC during the Early
Finkel reconstructed the basic rules of how the game might have been Dynastic III, being
played. The object of the game is to run the course of the board and played popularly in
bear all one's pieces off before one's opponent. Like modern the Middle East
backgammon, the game combines elements of both strategy and luck. through late antiquity
and in Kochi, India
through the 1950s
Contents Genre(s) Board game
Race game
History
Dice game
Modern rediscovery
Players 2
Gameplay
Setup time 10–30 seconds
Reconstruction
Basic rules Playing usually around 30
Gambling time minutes
Random Medium (dice rolling)
References
chance
Further reading
Skill(s) Strategy, tactics,
External links required counting, probability
Synonym(s) Game of Twenty
Squares
 Game of Ur
History
The Game of Ur was popular across the Middle East[3][1] and boards
for it have been found in Iran, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Sri Lanka,
Cyprus, and Crete.[3][1] Four gameboards bearing a very close
resemblance to the Royal Game of Ur were found in the tomb of
Tutankhamun.[4] These boards came with small boxes to store dice
A graffito version of the game from
and game pieces[4] and many had senet boards on the reverse sides so
the palace of Sargon II (British
that the same board could be used to play either game and merely had Museum in London)[1][2]
to be flipped over.[4] The game was popular among all social
classes.[1] A graffito version of the game carved with a sharp object,
possibly a dagger, 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][2]

The Game of Ur eventually acquired superstitious significance[5][1]

and the tablet of Itti-Marduk-balāṭu provides vague predictions for
the players' futures if they land on certain spaces,[5][1] such as "You
will find a friend", "You will become powerful like a lion", or "You
will draw fine beer".[5][1] People saw relationships between a player's Game box for playing Senet and
success in the game and his or her success in real life.[5][1] Seemingly Twenty Squares, 1635–1458 B.C.
random events, such as landing on a certain square, were interpreted
as messages from deities, ghosts of deceased ancestors, or from a
person's own soul.[5]

It is unclear what led to the Game of Ur's eventual decline during late antiquity.[5] One theory holds that it
evolved into backgammon;[5] whereas another holds that early forms of backgammon eclipsed the Game of Ur
in popularity, causing players to eventually forget about the older game.[5][1] At some point before the game
fell out of popularity in the Middle East, it was apparently introduced to the Indian city of Kochi by a group of
Jewish merchants.[5][1] Members of the Jewish population of Kochi were still playing a recognizable form of
the Game of Ur, which they called Aasha,[6] by the time they started emigrating to Israel in the 1950s after
World War II.[5][1] The Kochi version of the game had twenty squares, just like the original Mesopotamian
version, but each player had twelve pieces rather than seven, and the placement of the twenty squares was
slightly different.[1]

Modern rediscovery
The British archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley discovered five gameboards of the Game of Ur during his
excavation of the Royal Cemetery at Ur between 1922 and 1934.[3][4][5] Because the game was first
discovered in the Royal Cemetery at Ur, it became known as the "Royal Game of Ur", but later archaeologists
uncovered other copies of the game from other locations across the Middle East.[5] Each of the boards
discovered by Wooley date to around 3,000 BC.[3][4] All five boards were of an identical type, but they were
made of different materials and had different decorations.[3][4] Woolley reproduced images of two of these
boards in his 1949 book, The First Phases.[3][4] One of these is a relatively simple set with a background
composed of discs of shell with blue or red centers set in wood-covered bitumen.[3][4] The other is a more
elaborate one completely covered with shell plaques, inlaid with red limestone and lapis lazuli.[3][4] Other
gameboards are often engraved with images of animals.[3][1][4]

Gameplay
Reconstruction

When the Game of Ur was first discovered, no one knew how it was
played.[7][5][4][3] Then, in the early 1980s, Irving Finkel, a curator at
the British Museum, translated a clay tablet written c. 177 BC by the
Babylonian scribe Itti-Marduk-balāṭu describing how the game was
played during that time period, based on an earlier description of the
rules by another scribe named Iddin-Bēl.[7][5] This tablet was written
during the waning days of Babylonian civilization,[5] long after the
time when the Game of Ur was first played.[4] It had been discovered
in 1880 in the ruins of Babylon and sold to the British Museum.[7]
Finkel also used photographs of another tablet describing the rules,
which had been in the personal collection of Count Aymar de
Liedekerke-Beaufort, but was destroyed during World War I.[7] This
second tablet was undated, but is believed by archaeologists to have Rules tablet dated 177 BC (British
been written several centuries earlier than the tablet by Itti-Marduk- Museum: 33333,b (https://www.britis
balāṭu and to have originated from the city of Uruk.[7] The backs of hmuseum.org/research/search_the_c
both tablets show diagrams of the gameboard, clearly indicating ollection_database/search_object_de
which game they are describing.[7][1] Based on these rules and the tails.aspx?objectid=796973&partid=
shape of the gameboard, Finkel was able to reconstruct how the game 1))
might have been played.[7][4][5]

Basic rules

The Game of Ur is a race game[7][4][5] and it is probably a direct ancestor of the tables, or backgammon,
family of games, which are still played today.[4][5] The Game of Ur is played using two sets of seven checker-
like game pieces.[4] One set of pieces is white with five black dots and the other set is black with five white
dots.[4][3] The gameboard is composed of two rectangular sets of boxes, one containing three rows of four
boxes each and the other containing three rows of two boxes each, joined together by a "narrow bridge" of
two boxes.[7] The gameplay involves elements of both luck and strategy.[4] Movements are determined by
rolling a set of four-sided, tetrahedron-shaped dice.[4][3] Two of the four corners of each die are marked and
the other two are not, giving each die an equal chance of landing with a marked or unmarked corner facing
up.[4][3] The number of marked ends facing upwards after a roll of the dice indicates how many spaces a
player may move during that turn.[7] A single game can last up to half an hour and can be very intense.[4]

The object of the game is for a player to move all seven of their pieces along the course (two proposed
versions of which are shown at right) and off the board before their opponent.[4] On all surviving gameboards,
the two sides of the board are always identical with each other, indicating that the two sides of the board
belong to each player.[3] When a piece is on one of the player's own squares, it is safe from capture,[4] but,
when it is on one of the eight squares in the middle of the board, the opponent's pieces may capture it by
landing on the same space, sending the piece back off the board so that it must restart the course from the
beginning.[4] This means there are six "safe" squares and eight "combat" squares.[4] There can never be more
than one piece on a single square at any given time, so having too many pieces on the board at once can
impede a player's mobility.[4]

When a player rolls a number using the dice, they may choose to move any of their pieces on the board or add
a new piece to the board if they still have pieces that have not entered the game.[4] A player is not required to
capture a piece every time they have the opportunity.[4] Nonetheless, players are required to move a piece
whenever possible, even if it results in an unfavorable outcome.[4] All surviving gameboards have a colored
rosette in the middle of the center row.[3][7] According to Finkel's reconstruction, if a piece is located on the
space with the rosette, it is safe from capture. Finkel also states that
when a piece lands on any of the three rosettes, the player gets an extra
roll.[7] In order to remove a piece from the board, a player must roll
exactly the number of spaces remaining until the end of the course plus
one.[4] If the player rolls a number any higher or lower than this
number, they may not remove the piece from the board.[4]

Gambling

One archaeological dig uncovered twenty-one white balls alongside a

set of the Game of Ur.[4] It is believed that these balls were probably
used for placing wagers.[4] According to the tablet of Itti-Marduk-
balāṭu, whenever a player skips one of the boxes marked with a
rosette, they must place a token in the pot.[7] If a player lands on a
Diagram Less likely, but
rosette, they may take a token from the pot.[7]
showing the possible, course
most likely in which the
References direction in players double
which the back over four
1. Green, William (19 June 2008). "Big Game Hunter" (http://co players race to squares of the
ntent.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1815747_ move their middle section,
1815707_1815665,00.html). Time. London. ISSN 0040- pieces off the thus making the
781X (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/0040-781X). board, with game longer
2. Collon, Dominique (1 July 2011). "Assyrian guardian figure" "safe" spaces
(https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/cultures/mesopotamia shown in blue
_gallery_09.shtml). BBC History. BBC. Retrieved and "combat"
2019-09-23. spaces shown in
3. Bell, Robert Charles (1979) [1960]. Board and table games green[4][7]
from many civilizations (Revised ed.). New York: Dover
Publications. pp. 16, 17, 21, 25. ISBN 1306356377.
OCLC 868966489 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/86896648
9).
4. Botermans, Jack (2008). The book of games : strategy,
tactics & history (https://archive.org/details/bookofgamesstrat
0000bote/page/712). Fankbonner, Edgar Loy. New York:
Sterling. pp. 712–20 (https://archive.org/details/bookofgames
strat0000bote/page/712). ISBN 9781402742217.
OCLC 86069181 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/86069181).
5. Donovan, Tristan (2017). It's all a game : the history of board
games from Monopoly to Settlers of Catan (First ed.). New
York: Thomas Dunne Books. pp. 13–16.
ISBN 9781250082725. OCLC 960239246 (https://www.worl
dcat.org/oclc/960239246).
6. S, Priyadershini (1 October 2015). "Traditional board games:
From Kochi to Iraq" (https://www.thehindu.com/features/metr
oplus/society/tradtional-board-games-from-kochi-to-iraq/articl
e7711918.ece). The Hindu – via www.thehindu.com.
 7. Becker, Andrea (2007). "The Royal Game of Ur". In Finkel,
Irving (ed.). Ancient Board Games in Perspective: Papers
from the 1990 British Museum Colloquium, with Additional
Contributions. London, England: British Museum Press.
p. 16. ISBN 9780714111537. OCLC 150371733 (https://ww
w.worldcat.org/oclc/150371733).

Further reading
Botermans, Jack (1988). Le Monde des jeux. Paris: Le Chêne. ISBN 978-2851085122.
Finkel Irving (1991). La tablette des régles du jeu royal d'Ur (https://reglesdejeux.github.io/regle
s-jeu-royal-ur/index.html). Jouer dans l'Antiquité, Catalogue de l'Exposition. Marseille: Musée
d'Archéologie Méditerranéenne.
Finkel, Irving (2005) [1995]. Games: Discover and Play Five Famous Ancient Games (3rd ed.).
London: British Museum Press. ISBN 978-0714131122
Lhôte, Jean-Marie (1993). Histoire des jeux de société. Paris: Flammarion. ISBN 978-
2080109293.

External links
This article is about an item held in the British Museum. The object reference is ME 120834 (https://www.
britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/search_object_details.aspx?objectid=8817&
partid=1).
Deciphering the world's oldest rule book – Irving Finkel – The British Museum (https://www.yout
ube.com/watch?v=wHjznvH54Cw)
Tom Scott vs Irving Finkel: The Royal Game of Ur – The British Museum (https://www.youtube.c
om/watch?v=WZskjLq040I)
Play the Royal Game of Ur on GouziGouza (https://gouzigouza.com/ur)

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