Other Ancient Games

Aseb – Game of 20 Squares

Wooden Aseb Game of 18th Dynasty – Brooklyn Museum – 37.93E, 37.94E

Aseb – Game of 20 Squares September 18, 2017 By Eli 3 Comments Print Friendly, PDF & Email Aseb is the Egyptian version of the ancient Middle Eastern game called The Game of 20 Squares. According to some historians, the Egyptian name of this game was Tjau, which in ancient Egyptian slang meant “got it” or “bingo”, but others claim that this name is a mistake. Aseb is related to the Royal Game of Ur in its more archaic forms, and probably arrived in Egypt from ancient Sumer, during the 17th Dynasty. Versions of Aseb have been found in Egypt, Sudan, Crete, and even in India.

Aseb Rules

  1. Number of players is 2.
  2. The game includes the board of 20 squares arranged into 3 rows of 4 columns and a line of 8 cells, 5 conoid pieces, 5 round spindle pieces, and 4, two sided, throwing sticks are included in the game to serve as dice, with one side rounded and the other side flat.
  3. In some versions of Aseb, a single 4 sided knucklebone, a single 4 sided stick, or a single 4 sided conoid dice is used instead of the throwing sticks. This slightly changes the game, because such a dice has an equal probability of any of the dice values, where as the throwing sticks do not.
  4. The game starts with all of the pieces located off the board, on the long fields adjacent to the line cells.
  5. All 4 throwing sticks are thrown at the same time. The score is determined as follows:
    1. If one throwing stick landed on the flat side and the other three landed on the round side the score is 1.
    2. If two throwing sticks landed on the flat side and the other two landed on the round side the score is 2.
    3. If three throwing sticks landed on the flat side and the fourth one landed on the round side the score is 3.
    4. If all four throwing sticks landed on the flat side the score is 4, which is the maximum obtainable score.
    5. If all four throwing sticks landed on the rounded side the score does not count and the player needs to throw the sticks again.
  6. Additional throws of the sticks by a player in a single turn are not allowed.
  7. To determine which player starts the game, both players throw the sticks. Whoever scores 1 first moves first.
  8. The player who gets the first move throws the sticks again to determine how many cells they will move.
  9. Each score of the dice determines how many cells the player moves from 1 to 4.
  10. A player can chose to move any of his pieces on any move, as long as the move is allowed.
  11. With each throw of the sticks the players can either add a piece to the board or move a piece that is already on the board.
  12. The players begin by moving pieces into cells #1-4 and #17-20, depending on what their initial dice score was.

Mancala

2×6 Mancala Board, Yoruba People, Nigeria, Early 20th Century – Penn Museum, 2015-22-108.1

Mancala is an ancient game, traditionally played on the ground using holes, or dimples, dug out in the sand or rock and tree seeds or pebbles. Its origins are unknown, but from its widespread, usage, and simplicity of materials, it would seem that it is at least over 2000 years old. The game’s older variants exist mostly in Africa. As the African slave trade spread the game spread as well to Asia and the Caribbean, as well as the Americas and Europe. There are over 100 Mancala variants around the world.

There have been many claims in recent years of the oldest Mancala boards found in Israel in Gadara in Roman bathhouses and in Ethiopia at Aksum. However, a closer look at the hole patterns carved in the rocks clearly shows that these are not Mancala boards because the number of holes is different. The Aksum board has a 3×10 grid and is obviously Senet, the Game of 30 Squares, and the boards in Gadara, Israel have a variety of patterns, most notably 5×2 which is the Greek game Pente Grammai. It does not seem to appear that the Romans, ancient Egyptians, or Axumites played Mancala. The game seemed to be more of a pastime of the African tribes and hence remained undocumented until the Europeans came to Africa.

Mancala is the Egyptian Arabic name of the game, derived from the word naql (نقل), meaning “to move”. So the name Mancala roughly means “movement”. Its earliest mention by name is in the Sunni Islamic law code, Kitab al-Umm (كـتـاب الأم) (VI, 213), written by Imam ash-Shafii (767-820 CE), where the game is called Hizzah and is described as, “a piece of wood in which there are holes for playing.” A commentary on Kitab al-Umm, called Az-Zawajir an Iqtirafal-Kabayir (II, 191), written by Ibn Hajar Al-Haytami (1503-1566 CE), confirms that Hizzah is a similar name to Mancala, by saying: “Hizzah is a piece of wood in which there are three rows of holes into which small pebbles are put for playing. It may also be called fourteen (shahardah / arbaata ashara). In Egypt, it is called manqalah. In the Taqrib of Sulaym, it is explained as a board in which there are twenty eight holes, fourteen on one side, and fourteen on the other, for playing.”

Lane’s Egyptian Mancala Rules

  1. Cells 1-6 belong to the first player, where as cells 7-12 belong to the second player.
  2. The first player starts the game by placing all of the 72 pebbles into the middle 4 cells (8-11 and 2-5) they want on their side, and in the opponent’s cells of the other side, opposite to the ones where they placed pebbles. The most extreme cells on each side (cells 7, 12 and 1,6) are left empty. For example, if the player placed pebbles in cells 8, 9, and 11, and left cell 10 empty as well, then they also must place pebbles into cells 5, 4, and 2, because they are opposite to cells 8,9, and 11.
    1. The pebbles should not be placed evenly into all cells (meaning 6 per cell), because if that’s done then the player who goes first will for sure lose.
    2. Typically, the player should place at least 4 pebbles per cell, but they do not have to.
  3. If the opposing player is not satisfied with their opponent’s distribution of the pebbles then they may turn the game around and take the opposite side of the board for themselves. But if they do this, they forfeit the first turn to move, and go second.
  4. Once the pebbles have been distributed the other player begins moving the pieces, by picking up all of the pebbles in any cell on their side that they chose (the one that makes most sense strategically) and placing one pebble per cell moving counterclockwise until they run out of the pebbles in their hand. The opponent may stop the moving player and request to count the number of pebbles inside a cell from which the move is being made.
  5. If after the move, the last cell into which the moving player placed a pebble, contains only 1 pebble (i.e. the cell was empty before the move), then that player’s turn ends, and the opponent moves.
  6. If after the move, the last cell and/or any of the preceding cells (in order) into which the moving player placed pebbles contain 2 or 4 pebbles, they collect the contents of that cell and also of the cell that is opposite to that cell, for themselves into a pile outside of the board, and this constitutes a score. Each pebble counts for 1 point. For example, if the player made a move from cell 10, which contained 6 pebbles, then they would place one pebble into each subsequent cell counter clockwise and their turn would stop on cell 4. Then, if cells 4 and cell 3 contain 2 or 4 pebbles in each, then the player will take the pebbles inside cells 3 and 4, and also inside cells 10 and 9, because they are opposite to those cells. However, if after the move, also cell 12 and cell 1 contained 2 or 4 pebbles, then the contents of those cells will not be removed, because they were not in sequence with the last cell (cell 4), because cell 2 broke the sequence, by not having the correct amount of pebbles in it (i.e. not 2 or 4). Once a player scores, they get a second turn, starting from any of the cells on their own side that they want.
  7. If after the move, the last cell contains 3, 5 or more pebbles, then the player gets a second turn. They take the pebbles out of that last cell and go again, distributing them one per cell in a counterclockwise manner.
  8. If a player has more than one pebble in any of the cells on their side, but the opponent has no pebbles at all on their side (i.e. their whole side is empty), then the player with multiple pebbles on their side must place a single pebble into the opponent’s first empty cell (cell 7 or cell 1).
  9. If only one pebble remains in the game, that pebble becomes the property of the person on whose side its own, when it remains as the lone pebble, and gets added to their score.
  10. Once the board has been completely cleared of pebbles, both players count how many pebbles they have in their score piles, and the person with the larger amount of pebbles wins that round, by the difference of how many pebbles they scored above the other player.
  11. The players then continue to play another round and another round, until one of them reaches the final score of 60. Whoever reaches the score of 60 first wins the game.

Ludus Latrunculorum (Latrunculi)

Latrunculi found at Housesteads Roman Fort or Roman Corbridge, complete with pottery counters and dice containers. 2nd-3rd century CE. Corbridge Roman Town and Museum, English Hertitage. Photo: Historic England Archive.

Ludus Latrunculorum, or Latrunculi is an ancient Roman game of pure strategy. Typically, it was played on boards with grids of 7×7, 7×8, 8×8, 8×9, 9×9, or 9×10, all of which have been found archaeologically. It is a game of military tactics, a little similar to checkers. The name of the game, Ludus Latrunculorum, means The Game of Mercenaries.

Ludus Latrunculorum (Latrunculi)
March 14, 2018 By Eli 12 Comments

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Ludus Latrunculorum, or Latrunculi is an ancient Roman game of pure strategy. Typically, it was played on boards with grids of 7×7, 7×8, 8×8, 8×9, 9×9, or 9×10, all of which have been found archaeologically. It is a game of military tactics, a little similar to checkers. The name of the game, Ludus Latrunculorum, means The Game of Mercenaries.

Latrunculi found at Housesteads Roman Fort or Roman Corbridge, complete with pottery counters and dice containers. 2nd-3rd century CE. Corbridge Roman Town and Museum, English Hertitage.Latrunculi found at Housesteads Roman Fort or Roman Corbridge, complete with pottery counters and dice containers. 2nd-3rd century CE. Corbridge Roman Town and Museum, English Hertitage. Photo: Historic England Archive.

The earliest mention of Latrunculi in the Roman writings was made by Varro (116-27 BCE) in his book De Lingua Latina (On the Latin Language), Book X, 22, with regard to the grid on the board. Although, none of the Roman writers provided a detailed account of the rule of the game, there is one account which provides enough detail about the rules and strategy of Latrunculi, for the rules to be reconstructed with some what accuracy. The anonymous Roman poem Laus Pisonis (Panegyric on Piso) (lines 190-208), written in the 1st century CE, says the following about Latrunculi:

te si forte iuvat studiorum pondere fessum
non languere tamen lususque movere per artem,
callidiore modo tabula variatur aperta
calculus et vitreo peraguntur milite bella,
ut niveos nigros, nunc et niger alliget albos.
sed tibi quis non terga dedit? quis te duce cessit
calculus? aut quis non periturus perdidit hostem?
mille modis acies tua dimicat: ille petentem,
dum fugit, ipse rapit; longo venit ille recessu,
qui stetit in speculis; hic se committere rixae
audet et in praedam venientem decipit hostem;
ancipites subit ille moras similisque ligato
obligat ipse duos; hic ad maiora movetur,
ut citus ecfracta prorumpat in agmina mandra
clausaque deiecto populetur moenia vallo.
interea sectis quamvis acerrima surgant
proelia militibus, plena tamen ipse phalange
aut etiam pauco spoliata milite vincis,
et tibi captiva resonat manus utraque turba.

Latin text from Duff, J. Wight, and Arnold M. Duff. “Minor Latin Poets”. Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press (1935). pp. 310-311.

If mayhap you please, when weary with the weight of studies, to be nevertheless not inactive but to play games of skill, then on the open board in more cunning fashion a piece is moved into different positions and the contest is waged to a finish with glass soldiers, so that white checks the black pieces, and black checks white. But what player has not retreated before you? What piece is lost when you are its player? Or what piece before capture has not reduced the enemy? In a thousand ways your army fights: one piece, as it retreats, itself captures its pursuer: a reserve piece, standing on the alert, comes from its distant retreat — this one dares to join the fray and cheats the enemy coming for his spoil. Another piece submits to risky delays and, seemingly checked, itself checks two more: this one moves towards higher results, so that, quickly played and breaking the opponent’s defensive line, it may burst out on his forces and, when the rampart is down, devastate the enclosed city. Meanwhile, however fierce rises the conflict among the men in their divided ranks, still you win with your phalanx intact or deprived of only a few men, and both your hands rattle with the crowd of pieces you have taken.

English translation from Duff, J. Wight, and Arnold M. Duff. “Minor Latin Poets”. Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press (1935). pp. 310-311.

As can be seen from the poem, it mentions the capture of pieces, trying to position them in a line to avoid capture, moving backwards and forwards on the board, removing pieces from the board once captured without bringing them back into the game, and bringing back a piece on the board when it was moved too far forward.

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