Episode 2: The Earliest Games
Hello, and welcome one and all to Anart Gaming, the show where we talk about the history and culture of the games we all enjoy. I'm your host, Sean, and joining me today is Donnie. Donnie, how the hell are you doing?
Donny:I am existing.
Sean:That's a good start.
Donny:It's taking most of my attention lately, but hanging in there.
Sean:Hey. How have you been? Not too bad, honestly. I actually slept last night, which has been a rarity lately, so I'll take it. Alright.
Sean:So Donnie, I brought you on for one very specific reason for this episode, which is like me, you find history fascinating and horrible. Fascinatingly horrible and horribly fascinating. Well, today, I decided what we're gonna do for this episode is we're gonna be looking at the beginnings of game, which is kind of a interesting topic for me because I didn't know a lot about this before I started researching, and it's kind of one of the reasons that I started this podcast. But one of the things is we aren't sure what the oldest game in history is. Yeah.
Sean:Like, the fact of the matter is the games themselves likely predate cities, writing, you know, any kind of, like, culture that we might understand. But personally, I'd place my bet on something to practice hunting.
Donny:I think that would make sense.
Sean:Yeah. Have you ever seen Star Trek The Next Generation?
Donny:Yeah. It's it's been a while.
Sean:Yeah. So there's an episode where Worf is talking to other Klingons that have forgotten their culture, and they're playing a game, and he shows them how you actually play, which is they roll a hoop and he throws a spear through it. That's He says it's a way to practice hunting.
Donny:Sounds familiar. I probably saw that one back in the day.
Sean:Yeah. But my guess is first games would have been something like that, where it's helped you practice hand eye coordination. It helps you sort of practice those skills you'll need for hunting.
Donny:Yeah.
Sean:Yeah. This is based on absolutely no evidence or research whatsoever, but it makes sense.
Donny:Mhmm. And prob there's probably like the bulk of historical things that we just don't have a material culture for to even get evidence from. I feel like that's just a fair assumption to make in general.
Sean:Yeah. So, you know, we only can really do history as far back as history goes. Like, you know, there's a reason it's called prehistoric. It's before history.
Donny:Yeah.
Sean:But my thought is is that early humans would have tended towards pragmatism, you know. This would give something children to do and train them for their eventual roles. Other possibilities I kind of spitballed was maybe practice for something like making clothing, knowing which plants are dangerous and which ones are not. I'm just remembering this like Australian nursery rhyme that goes through all the poisonous animals on the continent. That's a fun one.
Sean:Yeah. You know, Australia is a as close as the earth comes to being like a death world, so it it makes sense. But again, like the early the reason that I think it would be something to hunting is it requires more hand eye coordination. And if you're gonna hunt with something like spears or even rocks, you're going to need to practice that skill in a relatively safe environment. Yeah.
Sean:It oh, go ahead.
Donny:Also, possibly, like, there could have been social games, I would imagine. Like, we even have these now for for kids, like games that teach really basic things like taking turns or following rules. Because humanity, as far as we know, has been a social animal, like, as far back as biologically modern humans have existed. And, you know, back then, interacting with other family groups or or things like that could have had a lot of as almost as much impact as a successful hunt, I would think.
Sean:Yeah. No. I mean, that does make sense. Like humans are eusocial creatures and we work a lot better as groups than we do as individuals. Yeah.
Sean:Something I wish modern humans would take into consideration sometimes.
Donny:I'm sure there's an app for that now.
Sean:Yeah. Probably. But it would also make sense to turn this into something of a contest because it would show who has the best natural skills as well as who would need more training. My teacher brain views it as a fun way to do assessment. You make a game out of it.
Sean:Right? Yeah. So yeah. But those possibilities are not what we're going to be discussing today. Instead, we're gonna be looking at some of the earliest documented games we have in history.
Sean:So question for you. How old do you think the earliest board game is?
Donny:Oh, hitting me with a math question this early. I I forget the the estimated age of it, but the the oldest one that I'm familiar with would be the game of Ur, which I remember you mentioning that there have been older finds than that. So
Sean:Yeah. So
Donny:I forget how far back that goes though, which is awful because I I did some recent fairly recent cramming on, like, ancient history, bronze age, time scale and stuff. So I feel bad for not having that off the dome right now.
Sean:Well, one of the things that I actually dislike is history that is revolved around numbers. But Yeah. For our purposes, the earliest record we have for a board game is between March to March. And, yeah, that does actually predate the royal game of Ur, which we're gonna be talking about later, spoilers. Yeah.
Sean:But there may have been others, but it's as far back as we can figure based on archaeological evidence. This game is called Mehen. It's a game that's constructed from a circular stone with grooves shaped in a spiral that kind of curl towards the center of the stone. As a fun little side note, I've actually seen one of these boards in a museum. Oh.
Sean:As a somewhat related note, as I mentioned, this podcast kind of got a lot of legs from a visit to a city in Switzerland that happens to have a gaming museum with a lot of the history of games in it. They've got a fairly good English translation there, so just kind of wandered through and really enjoyed myself. If you ever happen to find yourself in that country or are living there now, I'd highly recommend checking it out. Honestly, I would recommend checking out any gaming museum. They probably need the support, and they're just fascinating places.
Sean:So Mehen itself is a bit of a mystery. We don't actually know what it was called originally. We get the name from an serpent deity in ancient Egypt. Among other things, we have no idea how it was played. We do know it originated in Egypt, and that's where we found a lot of these boards.
Sean:But like much in the Bronze Age before the collapse, it got around. It has been found as far away as Cyprus and near the Dead Sea, Meaning that it made it all the way across the Mediterranean Sea, may have made it into Greece. Mhmm. And it shows that it had some appeal to the various Bronze Age civilizations. To put a name to the number for the year, this was the first dynasty of Egypt.
Donny:Yeah. It's quite Quebec.
Sean:Yeah. It it's some of the earliest civilization that we're aware of. So, yeah, it you know, it's kind of interesting, like games have always been a part of our culture in some ways. Mhmm. But James Masters in his article on the game called Mehen, the ancient Egyptian serpent game, details some of how the game might have been played.
Sean:The might have been is important because as he notes, quote, how ancient Egyptians played Mahen, the game of the snake, is unknown, and all rule sets that have been proposed are inevitably speculative due to the paucity of evidence. Suggestions for the game began with Faulkner in 1892, and many Egyptologists reporting the hen artifacts have subsequently contributed new ideas, end quote. So this shows that among other things, game preservation has never been a goddamn thing. It's also important to note that we've known about this game for over a hundred years, and we're still trying to figure out how it works.
Donny:Yeah.
Sean:Humans are just kinda funny that way. It's also a look at how archaeology works. We make systematic discoveries, and new discoveries add context to what we know or and in many cases, what we don't know. But speaking of oh, go ahead.
Donny:I was gonna say it's it's probably fair to assume that the game was if the game was so ubiquitous, then, like, game manuals weren't really a thing back then. Yeah. Was probably you would learn how to play by word-of-mouth or by playing with somebody. So I I would imagine that the chances of even finding somebody mentioning in writing how the game was played or or referencing to a game of it would be pretty uncommon.
Sean:Yeah. And we're not sure exactly, like, how important the game was or if it was just like a a pastime for people. So yeah. You're right though. Like, game manuals have not always been a thing.
Sean:They've not always existed. So it's a little difficult to piece together the the game itself. It would be like if you had a chessboard and you had all the pieces, but nobody ever told you the rules and you were trying to reconstruct it. Like, you could make educated guesses, but you couldn't ever exactly get the details down.
Donny:Even if you had, like, a transcript of a conversation that was going on while someone was playing the game, it would still be hard to piece together the rules intuitively from that.
Sean:Yeah. A 100%. But let's talk about what we do know. So the board, quote, unquote, is constructed, from a piece of stone that's a circle, and there are several marbles that have been found with the boards. In addition, statues of lions have been found with the boards, suggesting that they probably had something to do with the game.
Sean:Masters does state that the lions are not always found with Mahen boards, so they might have been like an extra rule or maybe like something that you used as counting points or something like that. Mhmm. But that when they do, they're found in sets of three or six, probably meaning that they were allotted three to a player. Generally, it's accepted that the game was probably a racing game where you tried to move the marbles and the lions in such a way to reach the center or maybe the edge. We don't know.
Sean:I assume the center because humans seem to naturally gravitate towards getting to the center of things for some reason.
Donny:Yeah. Yeah. Even the the board design kinda reminds me of the the philosophical labyrinth or something like that.
Sean:Yeah. So masters also notes that we don't know if the marbles removed, the lions, or both. And again, like, we don't know for certain because we're just not sure. Yeah. But what is known is that it carried some significance to the people who played it.
Sean:It's depicted on the tombs of rulers of Egypt and in the tombs of their princes. So it was likely played by the royalty. It may have had some significance to the ruling class, or it may have been a pastime to those with, you know, time.
Donny:Yeah.
Sean:Speculation includes that it may have been used as a metaphor for the Egyptian afterlife passing through Duat, which for the listeners is kind of like the Egyptian underworld to be reborn with the sun god Ra.
Donny:Which snakes feature heavily in that association. Right?
Sean:They do. Yeah.
Donny:That would track with the board design.
Sean:Yeah. And again, it makes a degree of sense, or it may have been a fun way to pass the time, or it may have been both. We're just not sure. But the reason this is significant for our purposes is that it shows that games have, in some ways, always been played. This was the first dynasty of Egypt, meaning that board games are around as old as civilization itself.
Sean:It shows us that humans have always been fascinated with games and with playing them. This game was again buried with princes and pharaohs. It was depicted on tomb. Whether it held religious significance is honestly kind of secondary to the idea that the game itself was important. And personally, I find it fun that gamers are something that have just kind of always existed.
Sean:Alright. Any questions before we move on? Comments? Alright.
Donny:I I low key hope that we find out someday that the lions were the first ever DLC, I really doubt that'll happen. Oh,
Sean:man. That would be interesting. Alright. So the second game that we're going to discuss is a bit more recent, at least historically speaking.
Donny:Erem?
Sean:No. But good guess.
Donny:Less recent. Got it.
Sean:Yeah. So it also came out of Egypt and was called Zanet. So this translates to passing, though the passing of what is, again, not really known. It's speculated though that it had to do with the Egyptian afterlife. Walter Christ in his article, Passing from the Middle of the New Kingdom, a zenith board in the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, notes that the first depiction of the game dates to the third dynasty.
Sean:While fragmentary boards can be found as early as the first, The fact that Mahen and Zenet would occasionally be on the same board on opposite sides would suggest that they were contemporaries of each other. He also notes that it probably held religious religious significance as a depiction of it can be found in chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead. So, quote, by the new kingdom and perhaps earlier, Zenet gained religious importance as evidenced by its inclusion in chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead, where this deceased plays a net against an invisible opponent. The game itself is a reflection of the Ba passing through the duat, and is described in such terms in the great game's text, connecting the spaces of individual playing squares to different stages among along the journey. So, again, he states that the word zenet in Egyptian means passing and may refer to either the to the game's religious connotation of the Baa passing through duat or to the mechanics of gameplay where playing pieces passed each other on the board.
Sean:This was particularly evident during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth dynasties with many game boards found in tombs of the nobility and pharaohs, as well as depicted in graffiti on monuments and sketched on limestone ostraca, showing its popularity among all classes of Egyptian society, end quote. So this is completely aside, but I just like to note that even in ancient Egypt, graffiti was a thing, and I find that comforting. So Chris notes that although it can be claimed Zenette was played through the Roman period, evidence of this is a bit sketchy. Regardless, it was played for quite a long time, and it's a good idea that longevity of games can last centuries if popular enough. Looking at you, Chess.
Sean:The notion that games are used to teach spiritual matters is one that is found in numerous cultures, and get to that more in a bit. So you might assume that with all this evidence, we'd know how to play the game, but you would be wrong. In fact, we don't know how the game was played, though there have been a lot of suggested methods for doing so. I've stumbled across three each with similar ideas, but all very different as well. It's it's just confusing.
Sean:The yeah. The board itself had 30 squares in three rows of 10, and each player had five pieces, and these are usually referred to as pawns. However, how the pawns were moved and how one side played the game is not known. But the reason that I wanted to talk about this game is, again, it was significant enough to warrant putting into a holy text, and is some of the earliest evidence of a game that was used to teach religious concept. Again, not a unique idea.
Sean:Snakes and Ladders was originally used to teach the Hindu concept of karma and kama, a concept well outside the scope of my silly little gaming podcast, but that shows that games had a role as a teacher. Peter a Picchione, I think is how you pronounce his name. I'm probably completely off with that. Wrote at length about the religious significance in his article in search of the meaning of Zenet. He suggests that the board may have represented various fate, and that the Egyptians believe that by playing it, it could be used to influence the outcome of events, particularly those of the afterlife, which was of paramount importance to the Egyptian religion.
Sean:He also notes that various decorations on the board seem to indicate that the tiles one could land on might hold significance as well, though the specifics are unknown. It was also apparently wildly popular, and we have evidence that it was played at all levels of Egyptian society. It was played by priests, pharaohs, and commoners. Pikionne notes that it was even shown to be played by the Egyptian gods in religious inscriptions. And again, popular enough that it was play it was, decorated it was used to decorate tombs and was used in graffiti.
Sean:There's even, one, board of note that was scrawled into a ship deck that we found. Presumably, so sailors could have something to do the when they were supposed to be doing something else, like watching for hippos.
Donny:Yeah. I mean, that's usually what games are for.
Sean:Yeah. Yeah. We'll, again, get some more of how people were playing games when they should have been doing something else. But, yeah, it it's always interesting to see how little society has changed.
Donny:Oh, have you seen the papyrus illustration of looks like a lion and a gazelle playing Zenith?
Sean:I've not. No. Look for it.
Donny:It's it's interesting. It's I've seen other parts of, I think, the same scroll. It basically shows various animals engaging in anthropomorphic actions of daily life in ancient Egypt. I don't think the significance of it is known. It might have just been a comedy piece, or it could have been a metaphor for, like, the different tiers of society, anything like that.
Donny:But but, yeah, there's there's a depiction of two animals playing Senate.
Sean:That's actually really fun.
Donny:Yeah. It's interesting to me too because they're both simultaneously holding a piece, which I feel like could offer insight to someone way smarter than me on how the game is played. Because when both players are picking up pieces at the same time, that I feel like that would have an effect on things.
Sean:Yeah. Maybe. Could be that certain turns were simultaneous, which would definitely be an interesting way of playing a game like that.
Donny:Yeah.
Sean:I also found it fun that the depiction of the guy playing against an invisible opponent, some people speculate that he might be playing against death, which would be
Donny:The first thing I thought of was the seventh seal. Yep. Where Sir Block is playing chess against death. It felt very familiar to that.
Sean:Yeah. So Zenette is actually one of the games that got this podcast started, so it holds kind of a special place in my heart. I learned about it and was curious about how it worked and played. I was disappointed that we don't really know how it was played, but the curiosity about the spiritual significance, kept me going. Mhmm.
Sean:Alright. So questions or comments before we move on? Alright. So third and final game we are going to be discussing is, as I kind of foreshadowed earlier, the royal game of Ur. So we're gonna leave Egypt for a bit and instead visit Mesopotamia.
Sean:Not really geographically far, but it is a bit of a cultural shift.
Donny:So
Sean:this game dates itself to around twenty five hundred BCE, and unlike our previous two games, we actually know how this one was played. Part of that is this game or a variation of it was played as late as the nineteen fifties.
Donny:Jeez.
Sean:Not yeah. Not BCE. I'm talking seventy years ago. This game was still being played. Specifically, there was a small population of Jewish immigrants in India who played it, and when they immigrated to Israel, they brought it back with them.
Sean:This makes it one of the, if not the, longest running played games ever. The name itself comes from where it was first discovered, which is the Babylonian city of Ur. Now, the game itself was played with animal knucklebones used as dice. Players rolled the dice and moved the pieces along the board, trying to reach the end goal. There is a narrow bridge that joins two sides, and the center of the board is where you could bump an opponent's pieces back off the board.
Sean:If you've ever played Sorry, you have a pretty good idea of the mechanic. Backgammon is somewhat similar as well. Yeah. We're gonna talk about backgammon too. Boy.
Sean:So the game itself was occasionally used for fortune telling. According to William Green, an archaeologist named Irving Finkel was the first to translate an ancient text which told the ancient rules of the game, as well as some of its common uses as a horoscope. One tile would represent finding good beer, while another would indicate that the user would become powerful like a lion. I would like to note here that Finkel had his work cut out for him. The text that he translated was written in Babylonian and Sumerian, meaning that he was translating two languages at once while they were jumbled together, which just could not have been easy.
Sean:Yeah. Also, prophecy about finding good beer is my kind of prophecy. The game itself became wildly popular in both its country of origin as well as various other locations that it spread to through trade and, according to Green, missionaries. Quote, spread by traders, soldiers, missionaries, and other pioneers of globalization, Erk caught on as far a field as Iran, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Cyprus, and Crete. While religion has often been transmitted by violence, says Finkel, games transcend borders because we share a craving for entertainment and competition.
Sean:The royal game of Ur jumped classes too. In the British Museum, there is a 2,700 year old graffitio version scratched onto a limestone gateway to a palace in Khorsabad, once the capital of Assyria. Carved with a sharp object like a dagger, this makeshift board would have been used by soldiers to distract themselves from the tedium of guard duty. End quote. Yeah.
Sean:So a friend of mine once made dice using paper while on guard duty. So I think it's safe to say that this may in fact be one of the longest standing military traditions.
Donny:Oh, yeah. I would think so.
Sean:Finding something to do while on the most boring assignment possible.
Donny:It's important. You don't wanna get sleepy while you're on guard.
Sean:Yeah. Theoretically, you also don't want to get get distracted while you're on guard duty, but potato potato.
Donny:That's how you find the good guards. Those are the ones that can balance the entertainment with actually doing their job.
Sean:Yeah. So I also find it fascinating that a game might have been used as a way not just to explain religion, but to transmit it. It's an exchange of culture that would have been much more peaceful than conquest, and potentially offered methods of creating commonality between disparate societies, a sort of common ground if you will. The notion that games were used as a method of fortune telling is probably not surprising. Tarot, after all, was originally a suit of cards meant to be played with the major arcana representing various kinds of trump card.
Sean:This just goes to show that people have been making a lot out of random chants for a long long time. You ever do cartomancy with tarot cards?
Donny:I have tried once. I kinda had to look it up as I went because I didn't memorize all of it. But Yeah. Yeah. I I made I actually made my own cards with some markers and napkins just for the heck of it and tried doing a quick reading with them.
Donny:And I've also tried with regular playing cards once or twice.
Sean:Yeah. I find it's probably the least surprising thing I've learned about you that you decided to make your own tarot deck. So I promise we talk about backgammon.
Donny:Yeah.
Sean:Green notes that one of the reasons that the royal game of Ur likely fell out of favor was because another game took its place in popular culture, in this case, backgammon. So he notes that backgammon has a much more sophisticated balance between skill and luck, and as a result, it became more popular. Nevertheless, the royal game of Ur is something which can still be played today, thanks to Finkel's work, and shows that things have a way of coming back to us. This is important because it shows something important games can do. They evolve and they grow over time.
Sean:Occasionally, they're replaced by something else, you know, whatever the newest video game is that replaced the last video game that was really popular. But, you know, these games grow, they evolve, they develop, and they become occasionally more complex, but often just they whatever is more popular will win out over time.
Donny:Yeah. There's kind of an ebb and flow to it too because Mhmm. We see people now getting more interested in older video games and curious about the past.
Sean:Yeah. There's a there's a big retro game push, especially in the indie scene. Yeah. Alright. So you might be wondering why all this is important.
Sean:Well, for me, understanding the history of something reveals a lot about where we are by showing where we've been. Games today are ubiquitous. You know, you can find them everywhere. But early on, they were a luxury. This can probably be attributed to the fact that leisure in general was far less common than it is today.
Sean:You know, modern times, we have forty hour work weeks in most of the Western world. This would have been seen as decadent by the standards of our ancestors. So, you know, thank a union somewhere for that.
Donny:Probably depends on the the type of work as well.
Sean:It does.
Donny:Because, like, if if you're running a farm or something like that, you have you might have, like, a lot of downtime depending on what's going on, but you're never really off the job. No. Yeah. And then there's also, you know, entire weeks that are just work from sun sun up to sundown.
Sean:And occasionally longer because we now have access to reliable light.
Donny:That
Sean:too. So you add in technologies that's made life and development of games easier, and you have the cause for why today, games are far more common. And the whole idea of gamer culture, as I call it, can even exist. However, even in the Bronze Age, people of limited means were able to play these games and devote what little time they may have had to enjoying them. Humans like games, and every culture has developed some or several as the case may be.
Sean:So maybe do I'll do an episode on, like, early game culture for other, like, early games of various civilizations, but that's gonna be a whole long bit of research in all likelihood. So over time, games would evolve. Some would be long lasting like chess. Some would be flashes in the pan like whatever the video game flavor of today is. But the idea is that games themselves are long lasting and enduring.
Sean:And the idea that games are something even the earliest civilizations enjoyed is something to take note of. And, Donnie, that is the end of the episode.
Donny:We did it.
Sean:Yeah. So, normally, I'd ask if you have an online presence you'd like to share.
Donny:Mhmm.
Sean:But I know you rather dislike online presences.
Donny:Just a lot of work for me.
Sean:Yeah. That's fair. I understand. Sometimes I wish I didn't have an online presence.
Donny:I guess if people want to see me act in a low budget metal video, I could mention that.
Sean:Where can they find that? That's fun.
Donny:It's on YouTube. If you search for Harriksson official, h a r let me double check the spelling. H a r x s o n, I think. Yeah. H a r x s o n.
Donny:Official video, Mata Adiabo. And I played the the titular devil in that.
Sean:Awesome. As for me, you can find me at anarch mage on blue sky, anarch mage gaming on Instagram. And until next time, game on, everyone.
