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Long before Monopoly, Chess, and Draughts, even before Ajax and Achilles were depicted throwing dice on Greek vases, board games were played in the ancient world. During Sir Leonard Woolley’s excavation of the royal cemetery in the Mesopotamian city of Ur, between 1922 and 1934, five Royal Game of Ur boards were unearthed. Each were beautifully inlaid with plaques of shell surrounded by strips of lapis lazuli, and decorated with geometric and floral designs. Analysis dates the game to around 2600BCE.
This was comparatively modern compared to the game favoured by the Pharaoh Tutankhamun and the Queen Nefatari, wife of Ramesses II. The game Senet, dates back to around 3100BCE, and involves moving counters along a row of squares according to the number thrown by casting bones or sticks, zig-zagging their way across the board. Early examples of the boards were said to be plain, with the strategies to thwart opponents agreed prior to playing. Later boards included symbols on the last five or so squares, allowing for special events such as free extra turns or a complete removal of a player’s piece. Square twenty-Seven, for example, often depicted the hieroglyph for ‘water of chaos’ and had the power to send the player’s piece back to square fifteen. To win, all the player’s tokens, usually between five and seven pieces, had to reach the last square on the…