Backgammon History

Read about: The Origin of Backgammon

The fascinating history of backgammon is long, complicated, and very incomplete. Since the exact origins of the game remain unknown, there is much conjecture, a good deal of it both farfetched and ingenious.

From bones to dice

The evolvement of dice, our modern " bones, " is fairly obvious. Although our primitive ancestors may have carved four, eight, twelve, or even twenty faces on their gambling bones, the six-faced die, with numbers or pictures on each face, evolved fairly universally for two reasons. First, it is easy to build a cube. Secondly, the cubic form is the most convenient one for rolling. A pyramid tends to stop fast when it hits, while an octahedron or a form with even more faces tends to roll for too long.

With the invention of dice, they began to be used to move game pieces around a game layout. Games of this kind seem to have developed all over the world and some may be backgammon's early forerunners.

Mesopotamia Luck

Shortly after Woolley's discovery, archaeologists found a similar gaming board in another part of ancient Mesopotamia. Although this board was not decorated as lavishly, two sets of playing pieces and dice were found in neat piles underneath the board. Each player apparently had seven men and six dice. One set of men consisted of shell squares engraved with vignettes; the others were simple black squares, each inlaid with five lapis dots.

Pharaoh's game

In another part of the world, several thousand years later, the Egyptian Pharaohs were evidently enjoying another board game resembling backgammon, in fact, these findings are marking the beginning of Backgammon history. Archeologists have found boards dating from 1500 BC in King Tutankhamen's tomb in the Nile valley, and even at Enkomi on Cyprus, then an Egyptian colony. One board bears Queen Hatshepsut's name. With it were found lion-headed pieces, the ancient symbols of royal power. Many Egyptian tombs were adorned with wall paintings portraying people playing this game, suggesting that it was played by both the aristocracy and the common folk.

Although the Egyptian game differs from what has evolved into modern backgammon, they had invented an enviable device, a mechanical dice box. The dice were put into the box, shaken up, and thrown out onto the table. Like everyone else, the ancient Egyptians played their game for money and invented this machine to guard against cheaters (always a sign of higher civilization). Later, the Greeks and the Romans adopted this box in their versions of the game.

On the other hand, a different ancient Indian game, Parcheesi , bears close resemblance to historic backgammon, suggesting it as backgammon's possible remote forerunner. Parcheesi is primarily a four-person game, played on a board, with each player having several identical men.

As in backgammon, in Parcheesi the objective is to "bear off" all your men from the board, and in both games a player must bring all of his men into his home sector before be can start to bear them off. Further, in both games a single man or "blot" is a weakness, which allows an opponent to play to that point and send that man off the board. In both games two or more men on a point are very strong; in Parcheesi even more so than in backgammon, since an opponent may not even pass such a point.

China or India?

Both civilizations produced games of pure skill through out the history of backgammon. The Indian game was chess . The Chinese played a similar game, suggesting there must have been commerce across the Himalayas. However, the connection between either version of chess and backgammon is vague.

A Parcheesi player, who rolls a doublet makes his play and then takes an extra roll, while in the Navy game of acey-deucy a player who rolls an ace-deuce (1-2) plays it and any double he wishes, and then gets an extra roll. In backgammon, a double number is played four times, which is the same as two plays.

The main difference is that, unlike modern backgammon, in Parcheesi the men start off the board (as they do in acey-deucy and in some other backgammon history versions). Several versions of backgammon can be found throughout the Far East. The Chinese play a game called shwan-liu, while in Japan they play sunoroku, which omits the bar. In Malaya, they play main tabal; in Thailand, len sake or saka; and in Korea ssang-ryouk.

It's all Greek

Alea jacta est

Although Julius Caesar may have coined the phrase " Alea jacta est " (the die is cast) upon crossing the Rubicon, there is no evidence he played any particular dice game. Other Roman emperors did, however. The game was regarded as the sport of emperors, one of which even had a special room in his palace designed for dicing. According to Suetonius, the emperor Claudius was so fond of the game that he wrote a book on it, and had a table mounted on his chariot so he could play while on the road! There are reports, fanciful or otherwise, that Marc Antony played ludus duodecim scriptorum with Cleopatra. There are also records that Caligula was a cheat and that Domitian was an expert player.

The emperor Commodus is reported to have turned the imperial palace into a grandiose gambling casino. Indeed, it is recorded that at one point he was losing so badly that he allocated a large sum of money from the imperial treasury, ostensibly to finance an expedition to the African provinces, promptly went back to the tables, and lost every penny. Among his other excesses , Nero is said to have played the game for as much as the equivalent of $15,000 a point.

The history of backgammon doesn't end with that. During the excavations of Pompeii, archeologists found a backgammon table carved in the courtyard of almost every villa. They also unearthed a fascinating wall painting, portraying a backgammon tale in two scenes. In the first, two players are arguing over a game in progress. The second depicts an innkeeper throwing the two fighting opponents out of his establishment. So the game was apparently enjoyed by both ordinary Romans and the patricians.

Evidently, some resourceful Romans also used the game to play a classical version of strip poker. A painted glass from Rome depicts a young man and a girl, both of which are partially undressed, seated in front of a backgammon board, with pieces of clothing strewn on the floor around them. " Devincavi, " meaning, "I think I've beaten you," reads the inscription.

The establishment of Christianity did not vanquish the Romans' love for the game. A backgammon board carved on a marble slab has been found among the Christian artifacts in Rome. A Greek cross appears in the center together with an inscription which roughly means, "Our Lord Jesus Christ grants aid and victory to dicers if they write his Name when they roll the dice, Amen."

Roman legions must have been the ones to disseminate tabulae through Europe. However, except for the fact that the name survived in Britain as "tables," it does not appear that Rome's new colonies were immediately receptive. Only after the return of the Crusaders, did backgammon spread throughout Europe though out history.

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