History
The game has no surviving ancient name. Modern scholars call it Dogs and Jackals, Hounds and Jackals, or the Palm Tree Game, all names derived from the physical features of surviving sets. The most celebrated set — found by Lord Carnarvon at Thebes in 1932 and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art — is a palm-tree-shaped ebony box mounted on four legs shaped as bull's feet, with five dog-headed pins and five jackal-headed pins as playing pieces. It dates to approximately 1814–1806 BCE, the reign of Amenemhat IV.
The game appears to have originated in Egypt around 2000 BCE. It spread extensively: boards are known from Palestine (~1300 BCE), the Assyrian empire (after 700 BCE), Cyprus, and Iran (Luristan). Over one hundred boards survive across these regions, making it — alongside the Royal Game of Ur — one of the best-distributed board games of the ancient Near East. A related game with similar board geometry continued into the Christian era in Egypt.
The original rules are not preserved. Multiple reconstructions have been proposed; the implementation here follows Botermans' rules as documented by Cyningstan, the most widely used modern reconstruction.
The Board
The board contains 59 holes arranged in the distinctive palm-tree shape: two parallel tracks of 30 holes each, sharing a single apex hole (hole 30) at the top. Each player races five pegged pieces along one track from hole 1 at the base, up to hole 30, and then bears them off.
Several holes on each track are connected by marked lines (incised on surviving boards) that function as shortcuts or setbacks. A piece landing at one end of a marked line immediately slides along it to the other end — forward if the line moves toward hole 30, backward if it retreats. These connections are what give the game its strategic texture; avoiding setback holes while aiming for shortcut holes is the central skill element in an otherwise luck-driven race.
The blocking holes — points 10, 15, 20, and 25 — cannot be passed by an opponent's piece. This rule creates natural choke points along the track. A piece sitting on one of these holes acts as a roadblock; the opponent must wait for an exact throw that lands elsewhere, or the blockade piece must move on first.
Play the Game
Rules (Botermans Reconstruction)
Each player has 5 pieces, all in hand. The board starts empty. Decide randomly who goes first.
Throw 4 casting sticks. Count the number of marked sides facing up — that is your score. If all four blank sides face up, score is 5.
A throw of 1 allows you to enter a piece at hole 1 on your track. After entering, throw again. Once pieces are in play, any throw (including 1) may move any piece.
A piece landing at one end of a marked line immediately travels to the other end — forward (shortcut) or backward (setback). Shortcuts: holes 4→14, 6→20. Setbacks: holes 5→2, 8→3, 17→7.
Holes 10, 15, 20, and 25 act as blocks — a piece already sitting there cannot be passed by any piece. It is permissible to jump over non-blocking pieces.
No two pieces may occupy the same hole. If a throw would land on an occupied hole, that move is unavailable.
Pieces cannot move past hole 30. A piece on hole 30 bears off on an exact throw of 5. A player may only bear off once all five pieces have been entered. First to bear off all five wins.
Pieces do not stop at hole 30 but wrap around to the opponent's hole 1, racing to that track's hole 30 and bearing off from there. This creates blocking and tactical interactions across both tracks.
Casting Sticks
The throwing mechanism for Dogs & Jackals was almost certainly four flat casting sticks, each with one marked face and one blank face — the same technology used for Senet. The possible scores and their probabilities with four sticks are:
- Score 1 (1 marked up): 4/16 = 25% — enter a piece, then throw again
- Score 2 (2 marked up): 6/16 = 37.5%
- Score 3 (3 marked up): 4/16 = 25%
- Score 4 (4 marked up): 1/16 = 6.25%
- Score 5 (0 marked up — all blank): 1/16 = 6.25% — needed to exit
Scores of 1 and 5 grant an extra throw, incentivising the lucky extremes and giving the game its characteristic rhythm of cascading turns.
Sources: Cyningstan (Traditional Board Games), "Dogs and Jackals," rules based on Botermans, J. et al., The World of Games, 1987. Archaeological sources: Metropolitan Museum of Art accession 26.7.1287a–k (Carnarvon set, c. 1814–1806 BCE); Crist, W., Dunn-Vaturi, A-E., & de Voogt, A., Ancient Egyptians at Play, Bloomsbury, 2016. Distribution: over 100 boards known from Egypt, Palestine, Assyria, Cyprus, Iran.