Board Games in Antiquity

A Turning World: a Multidisciplinary Approach to the Spinning Top and other Toys and Games

“…For the origin and development of the myth see Borghouts 1973, with main bibliographical references to iconographic representations and hieroglyphic inscriptions. 6 Adults' games are better known from archaeological findings and iconography and encompass, for instance, gameboards which have been found in Egypt from the pre-Dynastic period (mid-4 th millennium BC) and in Mesopotamia and Iran from the Early Bronze Age (3 rd millennium BC), such as the Egyptian Senet or the Sumerian Twenty Squares or Royal Game of Ur found in grave PG 513 of the Ur necropolis (Finkel 2007;Crist et al 2015). Other gaming objects include dies and knucklebones, also interpreted as instruments of divination (Finkel 2007: 27-28;Beeri et al 2010).…”