Royal Game of Ur · Complete guide
The Royal Game of Ur: how to play the oldest playable board game
Buried in a Mesopotamian royal tomb 4,500 years ago, dug up with no instructions, and brought back to life by a cuneiform tablet. It is also a genuinely good game.
The Royal Game of Ur is the oldest board game we can still play properly. Boards inlaid with shell and lapis lazuli were excavated from the Royal Cemetery at Ur in southern Iraq in the 1920s, dating to around 2600 BCE — and they came with no instructions at all.
The rules were recovered half a century later from a completely different object: a Babylonian cuneiform tablet, written around 177 BCE, which Irving Finkel at the British Museum matched to the boards. The reconstruction describes a game two thousand years younger than the boards themselves, and the strongest evidence that it is close to right is simply that it works.
Each player races seven pieces along a fourteen-square course using four tetrahedral dice, which give 0 to 4 with a distribution — 1, 4, 6, 4, 1 out of sixteen — that makes some squares far more dangerous than others. Your own row is completely safe; the shared middle lane is where pieces are captured; and five rosettes grant an extra roll, the central one also being a safe square.
It is tense, quick and decided by genuine judgement. Not bad for a game recovered from a royal tomb.
How to play
Seven pieces, four pyramid dice and a fourteen-square course. How the shared middle lane works, why the central rosette is the best square on the board, and how the modern rules were reconstructed from a Babylonian tablet.
Where it comes from
Buried in a Mesopotamian royal tomb around 2600 BCE, dug up in the 1920s with no instructions, and brought back to life by a cuneiform tablet written two thousand years later.
- The boards were excavated by Leonard Woolley at Ur between 1922 and 1934 and date to about 2600–2400 BCE.
- They came with no rules; the game was an object for half a century.
- Irving Finkel reconstructed the rules from a Babylonian tablet written around 177 BCE.
- Boards of the same design have been found from Egypt to Iran — it was played across the ancient world.
How to win
The four-dice distribution decides where it is safe to stop, the central rosette decides who controls the lane, and the exact-roll endgame decides who actually finishes.
- Two squares in front of an enemy piece is the most dangerous place on the board — 37.5% to be hit.
- The central rosette gives an extra roll, cannot be captured, and blocks your opponent's route.
- Your own row is completely safe; waiting there often beats pushing into the shared lane.
- Price your moves: squares gained versus the chance of losing everything that piece has travelled.
Common questions
Is this really the oldest board game?
It is the oldest we can reconstruct well enough to play properly. Egyptian senet has older boards but far less certain rules, and Go has the longest record of continuous play.
How do the dice work?
Four tetrahedral dice, each with two marked corners. Your move is the number of marked corners showing: 0 to 4. Two is the commonest roll; zero and four each come up one time in sixteen.
Where can pieces be captured?
Only in the shared middle lane. Your own row is completely safe, and the central rosette cannot be landed on while it is occupied.
How do we know the rules?
From a cuneiform tablet of about 177 BCE, deciphered by Irving Finkel. It describes a later form of the game, so the reconstruction is informed rather than certain.
What is the best square on the board?
The central rosette: an extra roll, immunity from capture, and it denies your opponent their only safe resting point in the shared lane.
Guides
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