Royal Game of Ur

Overview

A two-player race game from Mesopotamia, also called the Game of Twenty Squares. The British Museum's board from the Royal Cemetery at Ur dates from 2600–2400 BC, and its cuneiform tablet of 177 BC holds what the museum calls the world's oldest known rules for a board game.

How far this page is checked. Everything below is checked against Irving L. Finkel's paper "On the Rules for the Royal Game of Ur", in Ancient Board Games in Perspective (British Museum Press, 2007), chapter 3, and the museum's records. Finkel is clear about what's known and what isn't, and this page keeps the same three layers apart:

1. The finds: what the boards, pieces and dice show.
2. The tablet: rules for a later form of the game, and Finkel's reconstruction of them.
3. The way most people play today, which is a modern convention, not a historical rule set.

1. The finds (third millennium BC)

• The board: twenty squares, a block of 4×3 joined by a two-square bridge to a block of 2×3. Some squares carry rosettes.
• The pieces: each player had seven identical pieces.
• The dice: either tetrahedral dice, each with two of its four corners marked (so each die scores with a chance of two in four), or four-sided stick dice numbered 1 to 4.

No rules survive for this early game. Finkel quotes Timothy Kendall's view as the most plausible: players entered their pieces on their own short row of four, turned at the corner, and raced down the shared middle row, where they could block or capture each other, using the marked squares as safe havens.

Finkel also suggests that in the early game the rosettes may simply have been lucky: landing on one gave a second throw. That's a suggestion, not evidence.

2. The tablet (177 BC)

In Babylon on 3 November 177–176 BC, the scribe Itti-Marduk-balāṭu copied a tablet (now BM 33333B) with a fortune-telling grid on one side and rules on the other. E. F. Weidner published it in 1956 as a text on fortune-telling by lots. B. Landsberger showed in 1960 that it concerns a game, and Finkel argues the game is the Game of Twenty Squares, played on its later board.

By then the game had changed:

• The board had a central run of twelve squares.
• Each player had five different pieces, named after birds: the Swallow, the Storm-bird, the Raven, the Rooster and the Eagle.
• Moves came from two knucklebones: an ox's and a sheep's.
• Each piece entered the board on a different throw (2 for the Swallow, then 5, 6, 7 and 10), and the tablet says what landing on a rosette meant for each, in terms of food and drink for "the pack".
• The central squares were also used for fortune-telling, with a phrase for each sign of the zodiac.

3. Finkel's reconstruction of the tablet game

Finkel sets out how the late game could be played, stating plainly that there's no evidence for the route round the board.

Equipment: the later board; five different bird pieces each; a four-sided die marked 1–4; a four-sided die with two faces "yes" and two "no"; twenty-five counters each.

Play:

1. Each player puts ten counters into the pool. Throw the numbered die: the higher score plays first.
2. Entering pieces. A throw of 2 enters the Swallow, probably on the first rosette. For the others, throw the numbered die and then the yes/no die. On "yes", the score becomes 1 → 5, 2 → 6, 3 → 7, 4 → 10, which enters the Storm-bird, Raven, Rooster or Eagle on that square. On "no", the throw is lost.
3. Pieces enter in order, but one already on the board may move on before the rest are entered.
4. Move with the numbered die, converted by the yes/no die when you choose. Land on a rosette and win counters from the pool: 3 for the Swallow, 4 for the Storm-bird, Raven and Rooster, 5 for the Eagle.
5. You must move if you can. If a piece is forced past a rosette without landing on it, you pay that many counters into the pool.
6. Landing on an opponent's piece knocks it off, and it must start again with its entry throw.
7. Pieces on a rosette are safe. Perhaps two of your pieces may share a square.
8. You need an exact throw to move a piece off the end.
9. The winner may take a penalty for each of the opponent's pieces still on the board.

4. How most people play today

Modern sets usually play the early board like this. It fits the finds and Finkel's suggestion about rosettes, but it isn't a historical rule set:

• Seven pieces each, and four tetrahedral dice. Count the marked corners facing up: a move of 0 to 4. A 0 loses the turn.
• Each player enters on their own side, runs through the shared middle row, and exits on their own side. Landing on an opponent there sends it back to start again.
• Rosettes give another throw, and a piece on a rosette can't be captured.
• You can't land on your own piece. Bear off with an exact throw. First to get all seven off wins.

With each die equally likely to score, four dice give:

Move	Chance
0	1 in 16
1	4 in 16
2	6 in 16
3	4 in 16
4	1 in 16

A 2 comes up three times in eight, so plan around it, and treat a 4 as a bonus.

Commonly argued

• The popular rules are modern. The early game's rules don't survive.
• The tablet's rules are for a later game, with five different bird pieces and knucklebone dice, not the seven identical pieces from Ur.
• "Rosettes give an extra throw" is Finkel's suggestion for the early game, not a recorded rule.
• The route round the board isn't known, even for the tablet game.
• Landing on an opponent sends it back, in Finkel's reconstruction and in modern play.