The British Museum

Hello everyone!

Last week we went to the British Museum to experience the history and culture of people who lived many years ago. We were specifically looking for old games that have been around for thousands of years. One of which I was excited about seeing was the Royal Game of Ur which we actually have to Iterate for one of our Modules.

A bit about the Game:

           Two players have 7 identical pieces each. Pieces are described as being 'At War ' along the central route of the board, but then turn off their own side to exit. There are two types of dice that can be found which were displayed in the museum. One was  tetrahedral dice, this is a four sided dice and had two corners were marked. Each player had 4-6 dice which are thrown which would determine how many spaces they could move. The second type of dice which were found was a stick dice. These types of dice are found at the Indus Valley site dating back the to the 3rd Millennium BC. On the stick are scores 1,2 and 3 which were shown by concentric circles and 4 is shown by cross-hatchings.  It is a race to the finish and players can knock out their opponents pieces if they land on them. There are also 5 rosettes and if landed on meant another go. 

We also saw the Senet Game where the pieces can be stored inside the board. The rules of the game are in some debate but historians have made educated guesses of how to play. 

There are also a lot of Chess Games at the Museum with all sorts of designed pieces  different from modern day chess. 

The rules of the games and for many other things, typography are written on the tablets made of clay and are indented which must have been very intricate work. 

There were many other things that can be seen there, and one thing I found really interesting because I love space was a mechanical device called an Orrery which illustrates the relative positions and the motion of our sun and all the planets and moons that revolve around it. This is a well known teaching tool used in lectures and demonstrates Copernicus's theory that the earth revolves around the sun. 

I enjoyed most of my time there, viewing all the real old games and how historians believe they have developed over time but it did get a bit tiresome in the last bit of the day as there are only a certain amounts of pots you can look at. However it was a really good day out reading about so many different cultures.