Delving into the Past

During our lectures across the year we have had the chance to play four of the ancient games we have been studying: The ancient Egyptian game Senet, the Royal game of Ur, Duodecim Scripta and Hnefatafl, sometimes referred to as the The Viking Game.

A racing game from Ancient Egypt, Senet pits two players against each other in a race to the afterlife by getting all of their counters across and off of a board made of three rows of ten squares. The game, as you would guess from a game based around racing to the afterlife, is heavy in religious imagery and gameplay mechanics based around religion with certain squares helping you on your way or hindering you. Progression along the board was decided by throwing sticks or rolling sheep knuckles.

The game features some interesting rules allowing players to use certain tactics, such as the ability to swap counters around. Should one player throw a roll that allows them to move their counter onto a square occupied by their opponent's they can swap the counters, moving their counter forward and their opponent's back. However, if a person places two of their counters next to each other on the board this prevents either one being 'taken' and if they manage to get three in a row this forms a block, completely stopping any counters behind the block from progressing. 

I thoroughly enjoyed playing Senet, it was a fascinating look at what may be the world's oldest game.

The Royal Game of Ur, so named because it was found during the excavation of the royal cemetery of Ur. This game was discovered by Leonard Woolley in the 1920's in what is now Southern Iraq, jut like Senet the game is played by two people racing to get all of their counters off of the board first. However, the Royal game of Ur is does not rely as heavily on religion for the game mechanics although it does feature a mechanic that allows one player to 'take' another player's counter and another that keeps counters safe thus allowing strategies to develop. A full set of rules can be found in Irving Finkel's Ancient Board Games, a book showing Finkel's deep fascination with board games both ancient and modern. 

Though similar in many ways, Ur and Senet bring out very different strategies and I must say that I enjoyed playing the Royal game of Ur jut as much as I did Senet.

Duodecim Scripta is an ancient Roman forerunner to blackjack and, like the previously mentioned two, is a racing game.  Two players race to get all of their counters to the final square and can 'take' each others pieces along the way in a very similar way to Senet, in fact there are so many similarities between this game and it's Egyptian predecessor that many people believe it may have evolved from Senet.

Duodecim Scripta is also known as "twelve lines" and was played using a three sided dice rolled in a cup.

Hnefatafl comes from medieval Scandinavia and is the only one of these games that is not based around a race to the last square. It is played by two players, just like the other games, but instead is based around one player trying to get their King piece off of the board while the other player tries to thwart this attempt. When playing it we did find it a little unbalanced in that it was nearly impossible to win as one side. The game has been renamed "The Viking Game" in recent times and re-marketed to modern audiences.