A board game that’s roughly 4,000 years old has been discovered in Oman.
The ancient game was excavated near the village of Ayn Bani Saidah last month although, unfortunately, the rules on how to play the game have been lost to the annals of time.
Artnet reports how the board game consists of a large stone board etched with grid-like markings and cup holes, giving it a strong resemblance to backgammon. It also, again like backgammon, appears to be meant just for two players.
“Such finds are rare, but examples are known from an area stretching from India, through Mesopotamia even to the Eastern Mediterranean,” explains Piotr Bielinski, the excavation’s co-leader and archaeologist at the University of Warsaw, in a statement. “The most famous example of a game-board based on a similar principle is the one from the graves from Ur.”
Smithsonian Magazine further reports that this board game—while a seriously cool discovery—was just one of many other incredibly old items unearthed during the dig. Take, for example, the remains of at least four towers, one of which “had not been visible on the surface” and “was only discovered during excavations” despite being about over 65 feet in diameter.
“The function of these prominent structures present at many Umm an-Nar sites still needs to be explained,” admits Dr. Agnieszka Pienkowska, another archaeologist who partook in the dig.
Ars Technica states that the dig was an effort to learn more about one of the least-studied regions in Oman, giving late to the relationship cities had with each other back then.
Alas, the only downside to finding this ancient, backgammon-like board game is that we may never truly know how it was played.
Ad Choices