HISTORICAL CHESS
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THE REAL HONEST TO GODDESS TRUTH ABOUT FOOTBALL

By Alpheta Patton (with Donus Felinicus)
January 17, 2008

Modern history records that the American game of football (not to be confused with soccer or rugby) was being played in organized leagues by 1865, but may have been played in some form in the early 1800's.

In 1867, Princeton University established some rules for the game, which before then had been a sort of free for all, often played on "Bloody Mondays." Harvard and Yale also claim credit for creating the first rules – in 1876.

It was also in 1867 that the game was first patented. Ahh, yes, the American penchant for trying to make a profit on everything and anything by filing a patent…

Today, football is the great American passtime of the autumn and the early part of winter, carrying us all the way through the end of January to the Super Bowl. My family is typical of millions of Americans. I came out of the womb with a book in one hand and a Green Bay Packers pennant in the other. My mother was amazed – "Where did that book come from?"

My five younger siblings and I were inculcated into the School of Football by the ghost of Curley Lambeau and the very real presence of Vince Lombardi. He turned the Packers around in just one year from a 1-10-1 record in 1958 to a 7-5 record in his first season in 1959. Over the next eight years, his Packers dominated the league winning six divisional and five NFL championships, as well as Super Bowls I and II. I was a sophomore in high school when the Immortal Game (Ice Bowl 1967) was played. Lombardi retired from coaching in 1968 but stayed on in Green Bay as the general manager of the Packers. Later he went on to coach another team, but we Wisconsinites don’t acknowledge anything Lombardi did after the Packers. Lombardi passed from this earthly coil to that Big Lambeau Field in the Sky in 1970.

Until I started college, I had no idea that not everyone loved the Green Bay Packers. With the arrogance of youth, I dismissed the dissenters as mere aberrations. Dallas WHO, I would mockingly taunt… Da Bears Still Suck, a Wisconsin theme song; the Vikings – girlie players whose fans prance around in horns and long blonde braided wigs. With the arrogance of insipient old age, I still dismiss the dissenters with the same tried and true taunts.

And so - you can imagine my shock and horror when I discovered that football was NOT invented by the wild and crazy guys at Princeton or, if you prefer the alternate version of history, by the wild and crazy guys at Harvard and/or Yale.

IT’S TRUE! Football – that quintessential American game – was invented by the ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. That’s right, your eyes are not fooling you – the frigging ancient Egyptians! Hey – I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried!

Yes, yes, I know, there are some who claim that football really has its roots in ancient Rome. There was an news article dated December 6, 2002 reported at Ananova that claimed as much, but the link no longer works. However, being wise in the ways of the internet, I copied that article lock, stock and barrel – and saved it at our Delphi message board. I thought it might be of some historical import at some future time and, as this article shows, it appears I was right! Anyway, here’s the text of the article:

Italians claim Romans invented football:
Italy's leading encyclopedia says ancient Rome was the birthplace of football or at least the place where it really caught on.

A new volume of the Encyclopedia Treccani dedicated entirely to sport claims the Romans popularised the game.

The book also says the Greeks played a game involving the "basic elements" of football, and called it "harpaston". The Times says the Romans latinised the game as "harpastum" and began it with a ball being thrown into the air between two opposing teams.

It's then thought they tried to kick, throw or carry it past each other to the opposing goal-line, with "much pushing and shoving backwards and forwards".

The ball was a sphere of "vegetable matter" moulded and bound together with horsehair or in some versions, "the soft and gentle hair of young maidens".

It was apparently both kicked and handled (the word harpaston comes from the Greek verb "to grab"), the distinction between soccer and rugby coming only two thousand years later, when William Webb Ellis reputedly tucked the ball under his arm and ran with it at Rugby School in 1823.

The original game was "a favourite way of passing the time among Julius Caesar's legions," the encyclopedia says. They introduced it to ancient Britons in the middle of the first century BC. According to some chroniclers, when things got really rough, the legions used "the skulls of slaughtered Britons" as balls.

The newspaper Corriere della Sera said Britons, some of whom fondly imagined they had invented football themselves, might find the latest theory "a rather bold bit of historical revisionism". But there was no doubt that, "if we Italians did not exactly invent the game, we certainly transformed it into the most important game in the world".

Story filed: 09:34 Friday 6th December 2002

It is clear from that article that the Romans stole their idea for football from the Greeks, from whom they also stole all of their gods, goddesses, way of governing, etc. etc. What the article does NOT state is that, as everyone knows, the Greeks stole all of their BEST ideas from the ancient Egyptians. Herodotus says so.

Well, maybe you don’t believe me. But there IS evidence:

GOAL POSTS: The original goal posts were invented in Egypt. Yes, that’s right, ancient Egypt. They pre-date Dynasty Zero (circa 3300 - 3200 BCE), and the symbol is one of the oldest in Egyptian hieroglyphics. The English translation is something like "Yo, put the ball between the arms." "Ball" was an analogy for "your soul." The "arms" of the goal post were the arms of the god of the Underworld, Osiris (whose primary colors are GREEN and GOLD) and the goddess of the Land to the West, also known as the Land of the Dead, Hathor (whose primary colors are also GREEN and GOLD). See further information under PUNT. More information here.

PUNT: Image: Hieroglyphic for "foot" - pronounced "b" (the Egyptians did not write with vowels as we do). The ancient Egyptians knew all about Punt. Punt was really big during Pharoah-Queen Hatsepshut’s reign in the 15th century BCE, when she sent an expedition of ships down the Red Sea all the way to Punt to barter for the special wood used to make the sacred GOAL POSTS. To keep boredom at bay as the ships sailed down the coast on the journey to Punt, the sailors would hold contests, kicking straw-stuffed linen balls toward the shoreline; the sailor who kicked his ball the farthest would win two extra rations of beer, so the sailors practiced their punting assiduously. This practice of kicking the ball toward a target on shore became known as punting.

The etymology of the word "punt" confirms its Egyptian roots, particularly in the memory that the "foot" symbol represented the "b" sound in ancient Egyptian:

BEER: For the ancient association of beer with football, see PUNT. It was the ancient Egyptians who first discovered the medicinal uses of beer, including its antiseptic effect (the ability to knock out bacteria with a washover of 16 ounces, for instance, although they didn’t use quite those terms). Some historians have speculated that the extra rations of beer won by the Egyptian winners of the punting contests were used to treat bloody sores on the punting foot, by using some of the beer to wrap the tender foot in beer-soaked bandages and drinking the rest.

Beer is America’s beverage of choice today and holds a special place in football. The ancient Egyptians’ knowledge that beer (and indeed, all alcoholic beverages) had antiseptic qualities was long known in the "modern" world. Beer, being the cheapest alcoholic beverage to produce, was put to use during the rough-and-ready days of football’s American debut played on "Bloody Mondays." Beer was used to stanch bleeding from various wounds, and to dose the players to dull various aches and pains; the players generally ended up rather drunk by the end of the game. The fans observing the game would also drink beer in sympathy with the injured players, and everyone ended up rather drunk together. And a good time was had by all!

With the advent of the modern game of football with its on-field top of the line medical care, the players are no longer doused in (and dosed with) beer to kill their pain. Now they use Vicodin. But the tradition of swilling lots of beer lives on among the fans in the stands watching the game. Today, they get "beyond drunk" - they pass into an alternative existence of beerdom.

GOAL LINE: An apt analogy, one the ancient Greeks stole from the ancient Egyptians, is the "punt" which ferries the souls of the deceased to the Land of the Dead across the River Styx. See PUNT.

So, there you have it: conclusive proof that football was first invented by the ancient Egyptians.

American Football History

Football History

A History of Beer

Hieroglyphics

Etymology of "punt". See also Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 1977 Edition, page 936 for etymological history under definitions of "punt." I received my volume of Webster's free from the local branch of Marine Bank for opening a savings account with $100. The bank is no longer in business.

Image of referee signalling Touchdown, credit Comstock. The use of vertical stripes on referees' uniforms goes back to an ancient Egyptian priestly tradition.

Spartan Cheerleaders Chess Tournament Rah! rah! Ra! Video at U-Tube

Football Chess at Chess Variants "There are many chess-like games, based on the game of football (or soccer). In The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants, Pritchard lists five under the name of Football Chess, (including the one described here) and mentions other too."