The Tablet and the Rules
On 3 November, 177 BCE, in Babylon, the scribe Itti-Marduk-balatu completed a clay tablet that has no parallel in the ancient world. On one side he drew a grid of 84 lozenge-shaped cells inscribed with zodiac signs and fortune-telling predictions. On the other — in two columns of cuneiform — he wrote the rules for a board game.
The tablet (BM 33333B) was purchased by the British Museum around 1880 from a dealer who had acquired it from local inhabitants of Babylon. It lay largely uninterpreted until the Assyriologist Irving Finkel recognised what was on the reverse: the oldest surviving written rules for any board game. A second tablet with the same obverse diagram — the so-called "DLB" tablet from the private collection of Count de Liedekerke — was published the same year (1956) and confirms the game's name: Pack of Dogs (KASKAL.KUR UR.GI7.MEŠ).
The game the tablet describes is the Game of Twenty Squares, also known as the Royal Game of Ur after the famous inlaid boards excavated by Sir Leonard Woolley from the Royal Cemetery of Ur (~2600 BCE). Over 100 boards are now known, distributed across Iraq, Iran, Israel, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Cyprus, Egypt and Crete — making it the most widely distributed board game of the ancient world.
"Your troops, well-being falls to them; Let them go out from House 5, House 6, House 7: Alone I will make my exit, and get as far as the…"
A literary letter to the Assyrian king Assurbanipal, alluding to the game, c. 650 BCEPlay the Game
The Five Bird Pieces
The cuneiform tablet names five game pieces for each player after birds — likely astronomical constellations or planets visible to the naked eye. Each piece enters the board at a specific house (square) determined by the required throw, and each has a different relationship with the rosette squares (lucky squares) encountered during the race.
| Piece | Entry throw | Entry square | Rosette: lands on | Rosette: passes over | Astronomical identity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🐦 Swallow | 2 | Square 4 (first rosette) or square before any rosette on re-entry | Success with women + general well-being for the pack | Failure with women + no well-being | W. Pisces |
| ⚡ Storm-bird | 5 | House 5 (first square of the central shared row) | Enough food for the pack | Starvation for the pack | Unknown — possibly a planet name |
| 🐦⬛ Raven | 6 | House 6 | Enough food for the pack | Starvation for the pack | Corvus; also associated with Mars |
| 🐓 Rooster | 7 | House 7 | Abundance of fine beer for the pack | Deficiency of fine beer | Lepus |
| 🦅 Eagle | 10 | House 10 | Pack eats its fill of meat | Deficiency of meat | Aquila |
The Two Astragals
The cuneiform text specifies two knucklebones: one ordinary sheep astragal and one ox astragal — the latter more than twice the size of the sheep bone and physically impractical as a regular die. Finkel proposes that the ox bone functioned as a "double-or-quits" converter:
- Throw the sheep astragal first: produces a primary score of 1, 2, 3, or 4.
- Then throw the ox astragal: it has two broader faces ("yes") and two narrower faces ("no").
- If "yes" turns up, the sheep score converts: 1→5, 2→6, 3→7, 4→10 — the exact throws needed to launch each of the four higher pieces.
- If "no" turns up, the throw is lost (or the primary sheep score is used for moving).
This elegant system means every required entry throw (2, 5, 6, 7, 10) is directly producible, and creates constant tension between using a small sheep score for movement and gambling on the ox die for a higher-value conversion.
The Board and Route
The third-millennium board from Ur takes the form of a block of 4×3 squares joined to a smaller block of 2×3 by a "bridge" of 2×1. The total is 20 squares. The route — as reconstructed by Finkel and Kendall — runs:
- White enters along the right column (squares 1–4), turns the corner, races along the central 12 shared squares (houses 5–16), then exits along the right tail column (squares 17–20).
- Blue enters along the left column, also converges on the central shared row, then exits along the left tail column.
- The central shared row is where pieces can capture each other — landing on an enemy piece sends it back to the start.
- Rosette squares (marked with a flower or star design) are safe havens: a piece on a rosette cannot be captured. The rosettes are squares 4, 8, 14 (in the shared row), and 20.
• Pieces must be entered in the correct order (Swallow first, then Storm-bird, Raven, Rooster, Eagle)
• But once on the board, any piece can be moved before the others are entered
• Landing on an opponent's piece sends it back to start — except on rosette squares
• Landing on a rosette earns counters from the Pool; being forced to pass over one costs counters
• Exact throws required to move off the board at square 20
• Pieces on a rosette are safe from capture; two of a player's pieces may share a rosette
• All moves must be made if a legal move exists
Archaeology and Distribution
The earliest boards come from the Royal Cemetery of Ur (~2600 BCE), excavated by Woolley in the 1920s. The most famous is an inlaid board of shell, red limestone, and lapis lazuli with a drawer for storing the pieces — now in the British Museum. A near-contemporary carved wooden example was found at the cemetery of Shahr-i Sokhta, Seistan, Iran.
By the second millennium BCE boards appear across the entire Near East. A slight change to the board layout occurred early in the second millennium: the 2×3 block at the narrow end was straightened into a continuous projecting run of 8 squares, creating a central run of 12 squares and keeping the total at 20. This later form survived into the first century CE. In Egypt, Tutankhamun's tomb contained an astragal of unusual size — likely used with the Game of Twenty Squares — alongside his six Senet sets.
The dual function of the board — game on one side, astrology/fortune-telling on the other (as recorded on BM 33333B) — may explain why boards from some second-millennium sites in Palestine and Syria have a shape strikingly similar to clay sheep-liver models used by diviners. Finkel proposes that the lucky-square (rosette) mechanic may be the game's oldest stratum, and that the elaborate bird-naming and betting system recorded in 177 BCE is a later development from a simpler "land on rosette = extra throw" rule.
Primary source: Finkel, I. L., "On the Rules for the Royal Game of Ur," in Ancient Board Games in Perspective, British Museum Press, 2007, pp. 16–32. Archaeological sources: Woolley, C. L., The Royal Cemetery, Ur Excavations II, 1934. Recommended: royalur.net (Irving Finkel's authoritative online version); British Museum collection (BM 33333B, BM boards from Ur). See also: Crist, W., Dunn-Vaturi, A-E., & de Voogt, A., Ancient Egyptians at Play, Bloomsbury, 2016.