The Royal Game of Ur
the race game of ancient Mesopotamia · seven pieces, four dice, one shared road
MESOPOTAMIA · FROM ABOUT 2500 BCE
Seven pieces a side race a fourteen-square track. The middle eight squares are shared ground: land on an enemy there and it goes home to start again.
The history
Found in the royal tombs
In the 1920s the archaeologist Leonard Woolley excavated the Royal Cemetery of Ur, in what is now Iraq, and among the treasures of graves some four and a half thousand years old he found gaming boards — wooden boards faced with shell, lapis lazuli, and red limestone, every square a small picture. People had carried this game into the next world. It was clearly beloved, and completely silent: no rules were buried with it.
Rules from a clay tablet
The game on this card follows the reconstruction of Irving Finkel of the British Museum. His key was a clay tablet written in 177 BCE by the Babylonian scribe Itti-Marduk-balatu, two thousand years after the tombs, which describes the course of a race game and the fortunes of its squares. Matching the tablet to the boards gave the game back its road: fourteen squares a side, a shared middle where pieces may be taken, and rosettes that grant another throw.
The honest footnote
Other reconstructions exist, and the ancient players may have told fortunes by the squares as much as raced on them — the tablet is part rulebook, part fortune text. The version here is Finkel's, the most widely played today: what the school's board plays, and what is printed overleaf, square for square.
The rules, plainly
A game for two players · decide by lot who throws first · a race, not a battle
The track
Each side has a track of fourteen squares, numbered on the board: four private squares, then eight shared squares down the middle, then two private squares, then off the end. Your pieces enter at square 1 and race in the direction of the numbers.
The dice and the turn
Throw the four dice and count the marked corners that come up: that is your throw, from 0 to 4. Move one of your pieces forward exactly that many squares. You must move if any piece legally can. A throw of 0, or a throw no piece can use, ends your turn. Landing on a rosette — squares 4, 8, and 14 — grants another throw.
Taking, and the safe rosette
In the shared middle only, landing exactly on an enemy piece takes it: it goes back to its start and must race again. Your own pieces block: no square may hold two, and a piece may not jump over nothing — every landing square must be free or enemy-held. The middle rosette, square 8, is a sanctuary: a piece resting there cannot be taken, though enemies cannot pass it either while it blocks the road.
Bearing off and winning
To leave the board a piece needs the exact throw: from square 14, a 1; from 13, a 2; and so on. The first side to bear all seven pieces off the board wins the race.
Play it here
Play against the school, at Apprentice, Journeyman, or Master strength — or pass the screen and play a friend.
Your side
Computer strength
THE RULES, PLAINLY — THIS VERSION
How a turn goes. 1) Roll the four dice. 2) Tap one of your ringed pieces — it moves forward exactly that many squares along the numbered track. 3) Land on a flower and you roll again. Your pieces begin off the board, in the waiting row: a roll brings one in at square 1 whenever that square is free.
The race. Each side has seven pieces and a track of fourteen squares: four along your own row, eight up the shared middle, and two along your row again, then off the board. First to bring all seven home wins.
The dice are four tetrahedral dice, each landing marked or plain: the throw is the number of marked ends, from nought to four. A throw of nought moves nothing.
Moving. Move one piece forward by exactly the throw. A piece may not land on its own side's piece. Land on an enemy piece in the shared middle and it goes back to the start — but the middle rosette is sanctuary: a piece resting there cannot be taken, and cannot be landed on. Bear a piece off the end with an exact throw.
Rosettes — the flower squares, fourth, eighth, and last on your track — grant another throw. If a throw gives you no legal move, the turn passes. These are the rules Irving Finkel read from a Babylonian tablet of 177 BCE describing a game already two thousand years old; the track is drawn as in the common reconstruction.