This is the deep dive on the ancient games. For the full sweep, from these boards to today’s daily puzzles like Wordle, see our companion piece, 5,000 Years of Games: How We Got From Senet to Wordle.
There is nothing quite like a board game after a long day. The bright colours, the simple rules, the memory of lying on the living-room carpet accusing your sister of cheating. A good board game relaxes you, pulling you out of your own head and into a smaller, more solvable world.
That pull is old. Board games are one of humanity’s earliest pastimes, and they appeared independently in civilisations all over the globe. Here is a look at the most ancient of them: where they came from, how they were played, and which ones we can still enjoy today.
The World’s Oldest Board Game
The Royal Game of Ur
The game most often called the world’s oldest is the Royal Game of Ur, which dates back around 4,600 years to ancient Mesopotamia. It is a race game, with two players moving pieces across a board of two blocks joined by a bridge.
It earns the title for a specific reason. Older boards exist, but the Royal Game of Ur is the oldest game whose rules we can still follow, because a Babylonian scribe wrote them onto a clay tablet in 177 BCE. British Museum curator Irving Finkel decoded that tablet, which is why we can play a 4,600-year-old game more or less as its first players did. He has even taught it on camera, and it gets surprisingly competitive.
Other Ancient Board Games
Senet
Older still is Senet, an Egyptian race game played by around 3100 BCE. It began as a simple grid of thirty squares and grew more elaborate over the centuries. It also grew meaning. By the New Kingdom, Senet had become a symbol of the journey through the afterlife, and the dead were painted playing it against an unseen opponent. Nefertari and Tutankhamun both owned sets. We know how Senet looked, but its exact rules are reconstructed rather than certain, which is why the Royal Game of Ur, and not Senet, tends to get the oldest-playable crown.
Mehen
Another Egyptian game, Mehen, was played around 5,000 years ago on one of the most beautiful boards in history: a coiled snake divided into segments. Players raced to the centre and back. The pieces found with Mehen boards, including small lion figures, seem too large for the segments, which leaves real questions about how it was actually played.
Tafl
Also called Hnefatafl, or the King’s Table, this Norse game set two uneven sides against each other. One player’s king began in the centre, surrounded, and tried to escape to the edge while the other player closed in. It spread across northern Europe from around the 4th century CE and travelled with Viking influence for centuries, until chess slowly replaced it.
Go
Most ancient games faded. Go did not. It emerged in China more than 2,500 years ago and is still played at the highest level today. Players compete to control territory by placing and capturing stones, and the game runs so deep that it holds more possible positions than there are atoms in the observable universe. That complexity is why no computer could beat a top human until DeepMind’s AlphaGo managed it in 2016. Go reached Japan by around the 7th century and spread worldwide in the twentieth.
Chess
One of the oldest strategy games is also one of the most played. Chess grew out of the Indian game chaturanga by the 6th century, its pieces modelled on the four divisions of an army. A common myth places its birth in Persia, but Persia received the game from India and passed it on. The word checkmate comes from the Persian shah mat, which is where the confusion starts. By the time chess reached Europe around the 9th century, it was well on its way to the game we know. We think it earns a place of its own, which is why we built a whole site around it at Chess411.
The Development of Modern Games
The First Commercial Game: Game of the Goose
For thousands of years, games were made by hand. The first commercially produced board game arrived in the 16th century: the Game of the Goose, a pure game of chance sent as a gift from Duke Francesco de’ Medici to Philip II of Spain. Players followed a spiral to the centre on the roll of the dice, with no skill involved at all. Within a few decades it had spread across France, Italy, and Germany.
The most famous board game of all has a stranger origin than most people know. Monopoly was invented in 1904 by Lizzie Magie, who patented it as The Landlord’s Game to show how landlords grow rich while their tenants are squeezed. It was a warning about the dangers of monopolies. Thirty years later, Parker Brothers sold almost the same game, credited a salesman named Charles Darrow, and left Magie out of the story for decades. She had sold her rights for 500 dollars. The lesson she built into the board was the opposite of the one most players take from it.
Monopoly & Others
Monopoly is a classic board game with political origins. Created by Elizabeth “Lizzie” Magie in 1903, the game was originally intended to demonstrate her reasons for supporting the abolishment of all taxes except for land taxes. This was considered a progressive policy, since it was supposed to close the wealth gap. But unfortunately for Magie, the original Monopoly game, called The Landlord’s Game, never really found its audience. For years it was played only occasionally, usually in revised forms, by small groups.
Later, popular game creators decided to buy and publish one of these spin-offs. But it was one of the less political versions of Magie’s game, meaning the original, progressive Monopoly board was never widely played.
Board Games in the Future
In the centuries since The Royal Game of Ur was created, humans have found a lot of other things to do with our time: card games, novels, movies, and, most recently, video games are all great ways we while away our days. But though the board game market flagged in the late nineties, it’s recently bounced back. Board game sales increased around 25 to 40% annually from 2011-2014, and the internet has provided a new medium in which to play classic games. Online versions of chess and backgammon, among others, allow for gameplay across far greater distances than ever before imagined.
From the board to the screen
The bigger shift is that the daily-game habit these ancient boards began never stopped evolving. It became the newspaper crossword, then the video game, then the puzzle you tap out on your phone each morning. We traced that whole journey, from Senet to Wordle, in our guide to 5,000 years of games.
Ultimately, these new technologies don’t provide competition for board games but new opportunities, leaving the question open as to how board games might evolve moving forward. Who knows: maybe, in a hundred years, board games will be as different from Monopoly and the Settlers of Catan as they are different from the Royal Game of Ur.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the world’s oldest board game?
The Royal Game of Ur, from ancient Mesopotamia around 2600 BCE, is usually called the world’s oldest board game. More precisely, it is the oldest board game we can still play, because its rules survived on a clay tablet. Older boards, such as Senet, exist, but their exact rules are lost.
Is the Royal Game of Ur older than Senet?
No. Senet, from Egypt, is older, played by around 3100 BCE, while the Royal Game of Ur dates to about 2600 BCE. The Royal Game of Ur gets the oldest label because we know how to play it, whereas Senet’s rules are reconstructed.
How do we know the rules of the Royal Game of Ur?
A Babylonian scribe recorded them on a clay tablet in 177 BCE. British Museum curator Irving Finkel translated it, which let modern players learn a game around 4,600 years old.
What is the oldest game still played today?
Go, which began in China more than 2,500 years ago, is the oldest game still played at a high level in more or less its original form. Chess, from 6th-century India, is close behind.
What was the first commercial board game?
The Game of the Goose, produced in the 16th century, is generally considered the first commercially made board game. It was a pure game of chance played on a spiral track.