The Game of Kings: A History of Backgammon
Backgammon, as depicted in the 13th century.
By Dr. Adhid Miri
The visit of Pope Francis to the ancient site of Ur and the photos captured there remind us that there are many hidden treasures of history in that area. It also reminds us of the impact the Sumerian civilization had on today’s culture and traditions. We wish to shine the spotlight on one such historic find in Ur, one that continues to connect our community members to that ancient Sumerian civilization.
The history of Backgammon is rich and fascinating. Whether you are a regular player or a novice, it is interesting to know the story of the history of the game. Considering how old Backgammon is, it is difficult to pin down exactly who was responsible for its origination, but the boards found in Ur are the oldest in recorded history.
The simplicity and fun of the game is unmatched, we will uncover the history of Backgammon and its popularity as game of entertainment.
During the 1920s, British archaeologists excavated Ur of the Chaldees, the Biblical home of Abraham. In the royal cemetery, they made an amazing find - five different game layouts which bear a slight resemblance to today’s Backgammon boards. They were made of wood, intricately decorated with a mosaic of shell, bone, lapis lazuli, black paste, and black limestone set in bitumen, and adorned with animals and rosettes.
Soon after that discovery, in another part of ancient Mesopotamia, archaeologists found a similar gaming board. After a short time, an American mission discovered a table board containing two dice, one of which was inlaid with points of gold. This board was less lavishly decorated, but under the board, in neat piles, were found two sets of playing pieces and dice. One set of men consisted of simple black squares, each inlaid with five lapis dots; the others were shell squares engraved with vignettes. Each player apparently had seven men and six dice.
It is very possible that Backgammon evolved from The Royal Game of Ur, a Mesopotamian game dating all the way back to 2,600 BC. Eventually, interest in the game died and gave way to Backgammon. Backgammon to date continues to be a very popular game in Iraq and is commonplace in many Iraqi coffeehouses, homes, and social gatherings in the US.
The Royal Game of Ur was a big deal around 2,600 BC. The game was thought to bring forward messages from supernatural entities and gods and to depict a players’ future. Like Backgammon, The Royal Game of Ur was played like a competitive race. The object was to get your pieces around and off the board before your opponent did so.
The Game was undeniably popular and widespread. In fact, four Royal Game of Ur boards were found in King Tut’s tomb! An Ur board was also found etched into the wall of the palace of Sargon II.
It was known as “The King of Games” in many areas or “The Game of Kings”, where it was largely enjoyed by royalty.
The most ancient possible ancestor of the game to be found so far dates back some five thousand years to the ancient civilization of Sumer which flourished in southern Mesopotamia in what is now Iraq.
It is not hard to see how dice, our modern “bones,” evolved. Our primitive ancestors may have carved four, eight, twelve, or twenty faces on their gambling bones, but there are two good reasons why the six-faced dice — with numbers or pictures on each face — evolved universally. The first is that it is rather easy to build a cube. The second is that the cubic form is best for rolling; a pyramid tends to stop fast when it hits, and an octahedron or a form with even more faces tends to roll too much.
Once dice had been invented, the next step was to use them to move game pieces around a game layout. Games of this kind seem to have developed everywhere and some were possibly early ancestors of Backgammon.
The Egyptians had one bit of equipment we might envy; a mechanical dice box. The dice were put into a dice box, shaken up, and thrown out onto the table. Like everyone else, the ancient Egyptians played their game for money and invented this machine to guard against cheaters (always a sign of higher civilization). The Greeks and Romans later adopted this device in their versions of the game.
Despite the popularity and spread of the Backgammon game, we do not know the name of its Sumerian inventor; however, most agree that the inventor was a scientist or someone interested in astronomy. The game architecture and dice design are based on the solar system phenomena.
For example: the pieces are in two different colors, half black and half white as a symbol for day and night; the sum of the numbers of the dice on both sides (7) is the number of days of the week; the sum of the pieces is 30 which is the number of the days of the month; and the number of the cells (12) on each side, which symbolizes the number of night and day hours. Also, if you roll and move all the pieces to end the game, the total number of the required points to move all the pieces requires 365 digital moves, which is the number of days of the year.
The engineering consists of a wooden board or a wooden box that can be decorated and inlaid with seashells or precious wooden pieces such as ebony, and a number of ivory, plastic or wooden discs in two different colors - white and black. There are 15 of each piece. Two dice pieces are used to play, and they are six-sided cubes made of ivory, wood, stone or plastic, and in each of these small cubes there are a number of black dots engraved from 1 to 6, sometimes speckled with gold.
Backgammon is not limited to the countries of the Middle East alone, but rather is practiced in many regions of the world such as Italy, Greece, India, Japan, China, America, and Canada. The manner of play may differ from country to country, however the basic principles of the game remain consistent and it is widely enjoyed throughout the ages, as kings, sultans and princes, and all classes of people practiced it.
The Romans were the first to make Backgammon truly popular with their version called, “Duodecum Scripta et Tabulae,” or “Tables” for short.
It is interesting that the philosopher Plato mentioned this game in his writings and indicated that it was common in his time. Homer in his book The Iliad said that the goddess Aphrodite played a podium on the moon. Roman history stated that Caesar Antonio was playing table with Cleopatra. There are also records that say Domitian was an expert player — and that Caligula was a cheat. And there are reports, fanciful or otherwise, that Marc Antony played ludus duodecim scriptorum with Cleopatra.
The Emperor Claudius was a keen player—he had a special board built on the back of his chariot to relieve the tedium of long journeys. Emperor Nero, among his other excesses, was a prodigious gambler. He played for today’s equivalent of $15,000 a game. History does not record what happened to his opponents were they to lose!
For many years there were different rules depending upon one’s level in society—true of many pastimes. Whilst the officers wagered large stakes it became so popular during the Crusades that soldiers below a certain rank were barred from playing.
In Rome, the game long remained one of the most popular among the patricians. It rivalled the Circus Maximus as a pastime and was regarded as the sport of emperors. Indeed, the excavators of Pompeii found a Backgammon table carved in the courtyard of almost every villa.
At Pompeii, a fascinating wall painting was found portraying a Backgammon tale in two scenes. In the first, two players are arguing over a game in progress; the second depicts an innkeeper throwing the two fighting opponents out of his establishment. Backgammon was apparently enjoyed by ordinary Romans as well as by the aristocracy.
The game continued to be played in Rome after the establishment of Christianity. A marble slab was found among the Christian artifacts in Rome. On this Backgammon board, in the center, was a carving of a Greek cross, and an inscription which roughly means, “Our Lord Jesus Christ grants aid and victory to dicers if they write His Name when they roll the dice, Amen.”
The history of a game can be tracked by looking for references in both art and literature. It is mentioned in early literature, both in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: “They daucen and they playen at ches and tables,” and by Shakespeare in Love’s Labor’s Lost.
It is worth noting that the English word “Backgammon” was not always used to describe the game. The word Backgammon first appeared in print in 1645. No one knows for sure where the name came from, but most scholars agree that likely it comes from the Middle English baec = back and gamen = game. Together, these two words roughly translate to “back” and “battle”.
Many do not know that the numbers used in this game have their origin in the Persian language, with respect to the odd numbers: 1= Yak, 2 =Du, 3 =Sai, 4 = Jahar, 5 = Penge (or besh), 6 = Shaish. And for the double flower: 1 + 1 = Huppy Yak, 2 + 2 = Dubara, 3 + 3 = Dusei, 4 + 4 = Durjahar, 5 + 5 = Dubesh, 6 + 6 = Dushesh.
Historically people have paid much attention to the manufacture, aesthetics, and materials resulting in the current luxurious wood inlaid with mosaic or seashells and attractive decorative and artistic detail. Old tables are called “King’s table.” The most famous types of tables are Iranian, Turkish, Shami, Afghani and Egyptian, and antiques are made of white pieces from elephant ivory and black pieces from the horn of rhinos.
Backgammon is a dice game, and dice games seem to have developed in every part of the world. It is played with two players. It is a serious and entertaining game and does not need much heavy thinking, like chess, because it depends on luck first and most often, the principle of probabilities.
The table game is one of the most popular social games, played for entertainment, challenge and competition. Backgammon is most prevalent in cafes, sessions, nights out, picnics and gatherings. Initially Backgammon was a challenging men’s game, but nowadays the game is enjoyed by both men and women, frequently with the condition, where the loser is required, for example, to pay the bill for the account, for dinner, or even singing or serving tea or a plate of baklava.
This kind of situation you often encounter while sitting in one of the popular cafes that crowd most of the old streets, neighborhoods, and alleys of the Middle East, scented with an atmosphere surrounding the table box, which is always haunted by smoke flying from cigarettes, hookahs, a ragged cup of coffee, a fragrant tea aroma, and other mixed noises and flavors.
Backgammon reached Europe, France, England, and Italy later in its life. In 1745, writer Edmond Hoyle wrote a book on Backgammon detailing the rules, and some popular strategies that are still used today. Then, in the 1920s, the doubling cube was invented.
The 1960s saw a big surge in popularity for Backgammon, partially thanks to Russian Prince Alexis Obolensky. He is known as “The Father of Modern Backgammon.” Prince Alexis co-founded the International Backgammon Association, and wrote his own rule book. He also hosted a series of tournaments for the game in Manhattan in the 1960s, attracting many celebrities and royals.
These tournaments increased the popularity of Backgammon. In the late 60s, Hugh Hefner started holding Backgammon parties at the Playboy Mansion. Hefner spent some of his last days on earth paying the game with his family. The World Championship in Las Vegas popped up in 1967.
In 2009, the United States Backgammon Federation was created to spread the popularity of Backgammon further. The federation is made up of the top players and tournament directors of all time. Backgammon tournaments continue to attract attention to this day.
Backgammon has also made its way to most casinos. While the rules of casino Backgammon may be slightly different, its presence in casinos shows just how popular the game is. You can even play Backgammon at online casinos!
In 2007, PartyGammon.com hosted a $1-million Backgammon tournament, the first of its kind. This massive, 128-person tournament saw huge popularity and a small revival of the game. It was hosted in the Bahamas and given wide television coverage. The tournament attracted the world’s best Backgammon players and was won by Andreas Martens.
Like Chess and other board games, computer technicians have invented “Backgammon bots” that can play the game just as well or better than most humans. Digital Backgammon is the new trend. Now, you can play Backgammon just about any time you want, anywhere. There are hundreds of different versions of Backgammon on Flash game websites, and hundreds more on the Apple and Android app stores. There is even a version you can play exclusively through iMessage with other iPhone users.
Chaldeans in the US and Iraq take the game of Backgammon very seriously. On one historic occasion in the late seventies in the famed 7-mile coffee shop Jabbouri, a newcomer from Baghdad, not known to most regulars at the coffee scene, walked in and challenged the best player in town, offering $200 bet for a game. This number was too steep for any one of the regular resident gamblers, but the allure of a quick win was too big to dismiss. A few gamblers quickly pooled their money together and produced their best veteran player (one-eyed Toma) to take on the unlikely intruder. Toma was decisively beaten, 6-0 in three quick rounds, much to the surprise of the stunned losers!
In a dramatic finale, Toma, who was not used to losing, stood in the center of the coffee shop, clutching the two dice that he had just played and lost with, and asked for a glass of water. He swiftly swallowed the two dice pieces like aspirin before anyone could stop him, declaring, “This treasonous dice can never be played with ever again!”
Since the Southfield Manor yesteryears, Backgammon traditions continue strong at Shenandoah Country Club, with boards made by the Babylonian master carpenter Fouad Atto. Annual tournaments are held with valuable prizes rewarded to the winners.
Today, Backgammon is basically the same as it always has been. It remains a popular pastime, with home versions available from most major board game companies.
SIDEBAR
Kings of the Game
The most famous players in old Baghdad during the 1950s were: AKA Jaber Abo-Aljaryed; Nouri Qamso; George Toggan; Hikmat Qajy (Louti); and Yaacoub Semaani.
Famous community legends in the USA include: Bassim Kassab; Hanna Shina; Najib Samouna; Jacob Bacall; Salman Konja; Dr. Peter J Kalabat; Joury Kas-Mikha; Harry Dikho; Fouad Atto; Nizar and Nabby Yono; Dr. Hillal Elia; Sami Salim Salem; Raad Kathawa; Fouad Najjar; George and Issam Askar; Amir Al Naimi; Gene and Tarik Dickow; Kays Swiays; Talal Samouna; Tony Yousif; Sabah Attisha; Mukhlus Shammami; Salman Qarana; Paul Sitto; Naji Bahoura; Johnny Yalda; Louie Stephan; Agoubi Stephan; Bishop Ibrahim Ibrahim; Father Manuel Boji; and Father Sulaiman Denha.
Sumerian gaming board and counters (seven for each player), from the Royal Cemetery, Ur of the Chaldees. About 2600 B.C. (British Museum.)