Royal Game of Ur

Sympkyn of the Moor

Number of players: 2
Type of game: Boardgame
Period: 2400BC+

History

The Royal Game of Ur is a game that was played in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest game boards date to about 2400 BCE, but the most famous, from which the game gets its modern name, come from the royal tombs at Ur, in ancient Sumer, which is in modern Iraq.

It was a very popular game in the past as boards have been found all over the Middle East and beyond, including Crete, even making it all the way to Sri Lanka! The game was also played in ancient Egypt as ‘the game of 20 squares’; all four senet boards in the tomb of Tutankhamun had this game on the other side of the boxes.

The modern game of backgammon is probably related to the Royal Game of Ur and later overtook it in popularity.

Unlike many other ancient games, we do have a pretty good idea of how this game was played! In the 1980s, Irving Finkel, a curator at the British Museum, translated a cuneiform tablet (BM 33333b) from Iraq written in 177 BCE by an astronomer named Itti-Marduk-balatu, in which he described the rules. Using this tablet, and photographs of another tablet that also recorded the rules, he reconstructed how the game was played.

Rules

o play, you need

  • Seven counters each – you can use anything – coins, paper, or counters from another game
  • A board
  • A dice or four throw-sticks.

Each player has one-half of the board. The aim of the game is to move your piece onto the board, and get it successfully to the other end of the board and then off.

  1. The youngest rolls first and moves one piece onto the board, moving the number of spaces indicated by the number rolled.
  2. One square can only have one piece on it.
  3. You can have any number of pieces on the board.
  4. If your opponent lands exactly on one of your pieces, your piece is sent off the board and must start the journey again.
  5. The blue squares, as shown on Fig 3, are safe. Only on the central strip (green) can pieces be sent off the board.
  6. Squares with rosettes on them are safe, and a piece cannot be sent off the board.
  7. If you land exactly on a rosette square you get an immediate bonus roll.
  8. To get your piece successfully off the board, you must make a throw of the number of squares needed plus one. For example, on the last rosette, you must throw a two to successfully get your piece off the board. If you don’t throw the right number, you cannot move that piece.
  9. The first person to get all their pieces successfully through and off the board wins.