Ancient Family Games Night? (ca. 3,000 BC) – Part 2/7

By: The Scribe on May, 2007

Ancient Backgammon Excavations at the “Burnt City” in Iran yielded what is considered to be the world’s oldest backgammon game, along with two dice and 60 game pieces to play with!

This 5,000 year old game is about 100-200 years older than a backgammon board found in Mesopotamia, which suggests that the people living at this city created the game and then introduced it to other people. Trade relationships between cities would have made it easy for merchants to introduce the game to others, perhaps playing a game over drinks; even kings might have taken in a game with visiting nobles over peace negotiations.

Backgammon, which combines luck and strategy, is still played often in this region of Iran today. The board which was uncovered during excavations looks remarkably like modern boards: it is rectangular, made of imported ebony from India, and features an engraved serpent which coils around itself 20 times. These highly artistic coils produce the 20 slots needed in the game, and although the board material had been imported, the game pieces were made of common stones quarried around the city.

The game pieces, found inside a terracotta vessel near the board, were made of stones such as turquoise and agate. Though the game is not conventionally played with 60 pieces – each player traditionally has 15 pieces to start with, needing only 30 pieces in total – it certainly does not seem unusual that those who played the game on a regular basis would need extra pieces, as small checkers are easily dropped or misplaced, or perhaps there was originally a second board included with this set that has simply been lost.

Want to read more?