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The ancestrors of Backgammon |
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Backgammon is for me more than a game. It is a dramatic but entertaining image of our everyday life. It has his fanatics, of course, organized amongst the world federation and gathering around the world in luxurious locations. Some of them also haunt casinos and bridge tournament looking for the excitement of the absolute gambling experience. But most of the players are only occasional and enjoy a game with some friends, after a meal or on a long bus or train trip. Backgammon like reality can be taken seriously or can be enjoyed through the eye of entertainment. Anyway, The way to recognize a good player is through adversity. The archaic ageIf you have visited the archeological section of this web site you have discovered how old is the history of race games mixing skill and luck. So long that it can be assumed that the inventor of the concept was certainly a scholar and probably one of the religious kind. It can even be assumed that its original goal was to design a divination tool more sophisticated than the knucklebones used so far for that purpose.
Evidence for that assumption is the various board games discovered in prestigious graves, decorated with semi-precious stones and symbolic designs. The link between the divination and the game is explained by the nature of the beliefs of those ancient near Eastern civilizations. Luck was an unthinkable concept at the time since the gods were seen as the organizer for every single phenomena of everyday life. Therefore been lucky was only seen as being able to understand the god's signs or having their favors. We can assume then that the number of squares and their organisation had some special significations. As you can see on the picture on the left from the Royal tomb of Ur (details : top
, bottom
), the central row was composed of eight squares. In later versions of the Game of twenty squares
this central row will expand to twelve squares and remain unchanged until now. Is the explanation to be found in the utlisation of six-sides dices or on the twelve planets of the zodiac, it is difficult to say. the later explanation could prove true if we believe the explanation of a Seleucid (former rulers of Egypt around the second century B.C.) cuneiform tablet which seems to link a row of twelve square and some prophecies (article published in Board Game Studies
n°2 by I. Finkel, Assistant Keeper of the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities, British Museum and translated in French here
). Later, those beliefs reached their peak in Egypt with the game of senet
composed of three rows of ten squares. Reserved to the he kings, the practice of bringing a crafted board game in their grave, to use only in the after life, became an institution. It was though that every dead would have to play a game against the god of Justice Thot evaluating on a balance the sin and the good action while playing a game. Interestingly this god was believed to be at the origin of the invention of writing, combining science, knowledge and religion. Representation like the one on the right, found on a board in the Queen Neferati grave tend to become very popular in the New Kingdom (1539-1070 B.C.) wether on a board game or on a papyrus (usually to illustrate the 17th chapter of the Book of the Dead used by the egyptians as an amulet for their journey in the after life). An illustration of those pratice can be seen in
the wooden door of Sennedjem's tomb
in the Necropolis of Deir el-Medina. An attempt of reconstructing the rules of the game can be found here game cabinet
. During all the Iron Age (1200 - 650 B.C) the game becomes a popular hobby. Many archeological evidences have been excavated in the near Eastern world including Lebanon, Palestine, Iran, Irak, Egypt and Jordan. The shape of the board tend to unifie around the central row of 12 squares which will prove so popular and the decorations tend to disappear, confirming the popularity of the game.  A lot of grids simply scratched on the floor have been found in the palaces of Mari (Irak) or Meggido (Lebanon), or on the bulls guarding the city of Korshabad (Irak) or on large stones classified for a long time as undefined design by the archeologues. As you have realised, the boards presented so far, present little ressemblances with modern backgammon : fewer squares for Royal game of Ur kind, more for the senet type from Egypt, lower number of pieces, five or seven by player and use of different instrument of random, tetradedrical pyramids or two face sticks instead of six-sides dices. However like you will read in the next chapters, there is a direct link between the race game of the archaic age and the duodecim scripta played in the Roman empire or the nard played in the Persian one and therefore a direct link with the game of the modern age. Although we know very little about the rules of the old variants, we can affirm that the final goal was the same and that some basic rules like the ability of catching the opponents pieces and taking them to the start of the game or the possibility to play again according on the landing on special square already existed.
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