ANCIENT GAMES USED TO-DAY

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 82, 3 October 1931, Page 22

ANCIENT GAMES USED TO-DAY

■ The fact that some of our modern games are very old was shown recently when the University of Pennsylvania Museum acquired a die, dating from about 2750 8.C., which may have been one of a pair used in backgammon. The backgammon of ancient days was played on a tablet-ruled with straight lines, instead of the coloured triangles painted on the modern board, which is said to' date from about the tenth century. But the principle on which it was played has been preserved, and, like a number of other modern games, backgammon's ancient origin is still apparent.

The Greeks played. a form of backgammon in-which the men or,counters were moved along a rectangular board known as the "abacus"; the players took turns at throwing dice,, and ad-

vanced their men according to tho numbers they threw. The, Romans had a similar game known as "Scripta Duodecim," or twelve lines,' which they probably carried over' from the Greeks. That backgammon was' also knowii to other peoples of ancient times is shown by a board, discovered at Ur and dating from about 3000 8.C., which is also in the collection of Pennsylvania University. The die recently acquired by tho museum was found at Tepo Gawra in Mesopotamia.

Even older than backgammon is the game of dice. Sophocles wrote that dice were invented during the seige of Troy, by one Palamcdes, a Greek; Herodotus credited the Lydians with the accomplishment; but the discovery of dice in very'early Oriental tombs indicates that they, wcro probably of Asiatic origin.