Reading time: 2 minutes – Spotted on The Independant
Popular in ancient Egypt, a board game known as the “58-Hole Game” or “Dog and Jackal Game” is believed to have originated in southwest Asia and circulated in many areas of the region. While it was believed to have originated in Egypt, a recent study published by Cambridge University Press in May 2024 challenges the theory of its origins: archaeologists have discovered six boards of this game on sites in the Absheron peninsula and the Gobustan reserve, located in Azerbaijan, almost 2,000 kilometers from present-day Cairo.
So far, 70 plateaus have been found in a wide area covering Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Iran and Anatolia. “Data collected in Azerbaijan show that the people of this country were playing this game at the end of the 3rde and at the beginning of the IIe millennium BC and that they participated in regional interactions that extended throughout Southwest Asia.”emphasize the two authors of the study, archaeologist Rahman Abdoullayev and researcher Walter Crist.
This new discovery indicates that this game may have been adopted by mobile communities of cattle herders during the Bronze Age. The presence of these boards at this location not only indicates that the region was connected to southern societies, but also demonstrates the success of the game “across cultures and socio-economic groups.” “At certain times in antiquity, certain games were popular regionally, suggesting that they helped connect cultures that regularly interacted with each other.”
A board game
As its name suggests, this game consists of a board pierced with 58 holes and two series of five wooden sticks (representing the pieces), the end of which is generally carved in the shape of a dog’s or jackal’s head. Although its rules have not been precisely established, the archaeologist Catherine Beyer offers a version in her work Games and toys through the ages. History and rules of Egyptian, ancient and medieval gamespublished in 2010. It is then assumed that the latter was played like the game of the goose, the aim of which is to reach the last square of the board to win with its five sticks.
The oldest example of this game was found in the tomb of a former official of Pharaoh Mentuhotep II who died in 2009 BC. “Whatever the origins of the 58-hole game, it was quickly adopted and played by a wide variety of people, from the nobility of Middle Kingdom Egypt to the cattle herders of the Caucasus, and from the ancient Assyrian traders of Anatolia to the workers who built the pyramids of the Middle Kingdom.”“, note the two researchers.
Source: www.slate.fr
