Royal Game of Ur maker

How to play

1. Toss four coins and count the heads. That number is how far you move one piece. In this version, no heads means you miss your turn.
2. Each route runs along your own row, across the shared middle row, and back along your own row to the exit.
3. You must land exactly. A square holds one piece, so you cannot land on your own piece either.
4. In the middle row, landing on an opponent's piece sends it back off the board. The middle rosette is safe: no piece there can be sent back.
5. Landing on a rosette gives you another throw.
6. Bear off with the exact number. The first player to get all seven pieces home wins.

Tips

• Four coins give the same spread of 0 to 4 heads as the original four tetrahedral dice, and they are easier to find.
• Before the first throw, trace the arrows: the blue route runs along the top row and the pink route along the bottom row.
• Keep pieces that are off the board in a cup beside you, so you can bring them in quickly.
• Agree on the exact-landing and no-heads rules before you start, because families play them differently.

Where it comes from

Leonard Woolley excavated boards in the Royal Cemetery at Ur, in present-day southern Iraq, in the 1920s. The game was played in ancient Mesopotamia about 4,500 years ago. Irving Finkel of the British Museum reconstructed rules from a cuneiform tablet written around 177 BC by the Babylonian scribe Itti-Marduk-balāṭu. Modern rules are a reconstruction, and many families use simplified versions.

Played in: Arab world & Middle East

Questions