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The Serpent Gameboard of Iran: Much Ado About - Nothing New... Jan Newton November, 2005 (updated January, 2007) The Article On December 11, 2004, the following article appeared in the Persian Journal: Dec 11th, 2004 - 16:43:57 Iran's Burnt City Throws up World's Oldest Backgammon Dec 4, 2004, 10:32   The oldest backgammon in the world along with 60 pieces has been unearthed beneath the rubbles of the legendary Burnt City in Sistan-Baluchistan province, southeastern Iran. Iranian archeologists working on the relics of the 5,000-year-old civilization argue this backgammon is much older than the one already discovered in Mesopotamia and their evidence is strong enough to claim the board game was first played in the Burnt City and then transferred to other civilizations.  (Caption under image of dice, right: 5,000 year old backgammon.  Emphasis added.) "The backgammon reveals intriguing clues to the lifestyle of those people," said Mansour Sajjadi, head of the research team. "The board is rectangular and made of ebony, which did not grow in Sistan and merchants used to import it from India." He added the board features an engraved serpent coiling around itself for 20 times, thus producing 20 slots for the game, more affectionately known in Persian as Nard. The engraving, artistically done, indicates artisans in the Burnt City were masters of the craft. "The 60 pieces were also unearthed inside a terracotta vessel beside the board. They were made of common stones quarried in the city, including agate and turquoise," Sajjadi added. Experts still wonder why they played the game with 60 pieces and are trying to discern its rules, but it at least shows it is 100-200 years older than the one discovered in Mesopotamia. They are also intrigued that inhabitants of ancient civilizations, widely believed to be concerned with their daily survival, could afford to indulge in such luxuries as playing board games. (End) The oldest backgammon in the world, heh?  Square dice 5,000 years old?  Let's take a closer look at this article and see if it's claims stand up to scrutiny. Questions Question 1:  Are those dice (pictured at the beginning of the article) really 5,000 years old?   A quick internet check of the archaeological record shows that six-sided dice aren't found until around 900 BCE (Etruscan) and were later the Roman dice of choice. (Photograph left: Roman carved ivory dice, circa 1st century B.C. to 4th century A.D.  Near East, 5 cm x 1.4 cm.(1)  Compare these die with those featured in the Persian Journal article).  Four-sided dice are older, dating to at least 2650 BCE, when they were used for Egyptian games.(2)   Prior to the use of six-sided dice, early diviners and gamesters used cowry shells, colored pebbles, carved sticks, two-colored sticks, and various types of animal bones that were tossed or thrown.  If the dice shown in the Persian Journal article are really 5,000 years old (meaning they date from c. 3000 BCE), this is a tremendous discovery and would greatly expand our knowledge of the time-line for the development of six-sided dice. Given the important nature of such a discovery, it would be very surprising if it did not receive a great deal of publicity and discussion in scholarly articles, journals and archaeology and history magazines geared toward the general public.  That's a key point:  if this is a great new discovery, why didn't it get much more publicity and press coverage?(3)  My guess about how the image of the dice appeared in the Persian Journal article is that an editor inserted a stock file photo to add interest to the article, since it does not contain any photographs of the items mentioned in the article - the serpent gameboard and the playing pieces!(4) Question 2:  What is the evidence for the article's claim that "this backgammon is much older than the one already discovered in Mesopotamia"? The short answer to this question:  None. The article made this rather amazing statement: "... their evidence is strong enough to claim the board game was first played in the Burnt City and then transferred to other civilizations"; and yet, it is totally unsupported by any statements of fact in the article.  There is NO EVIDENCE GIVEN to support the article's statements about the game board, such as citations to sources that could be examined for veracity. Question 3:  When, exactly, was this game board discovered? The article gives the impression that the serpent gameboard had just recently been discovered (one would assume, that is, near the date the article first appeared, in December, 2004).  Indeed, it is written in the present tense - the board has been unearthed;  but no actual date of discovery of the board or excavation date is stated in the article.  Why not?  Isn't this one of the primary rules of reporting - who? what? when? where? why?  Given the magnitude of the discovery asserted in the article (world's oldest backgammon board, 5,000 years old, etc.), it seems rather strange to omit such an important fact as the date of discovery!   Why, then, the lack of such a pertinent detail?   Question 4:  Why is there no photograph of the Burnt City serpent gameboard or game pieces in the article?   The board is the star of the article; the playing pieces discovered in the same tomb are supporting actors.  Why then, no photographs of either? Research: Checking Out Clues The Board.  During the 1920's Sir Leonard Woolley excavated two 20-squares game boards from what he called the "Royal Tombs of Ur" in Iraq.  Those gameboards have been dated to c. 2600-2400 BCE.  The Persian Journal article comment about  "one" board that had been excavated in Mesopotamia is probably a reference to these famous 20-squares boards (now housed in the British Museum).  The 20-squares boards of Sumer set the mark for measuring the antiquity of similar game boards. The image at the left is a representation of one of the 20-squares game boards excavated by Woolley.(5) The distinctive design of the board described in the Persian Journal article - an intertwined serpent marking out twenty playing squares - provided a convenient place to begin research.  Based on it's description, it is not a unique design.  In fact, the board sounds identical to the design of a gameboard that was featured in my article Goddess Iconography in Ancient Game Boards, presented to a meeting of chess historians in Amsterdam during a meeting of the Initiative Group Koenigstein, November 30 - December 2, 2001. That game board was written about in 1987, and I believe its discovery, at Shar-i Sokhta, dates back to at least 1983.(6) Here is a picture (left) of the Shar-i Sokhta game board that I wrote about in Goddess Iconography, that dates to circa 2400-2300 BCE.   It was published in "Evidence of Western Cultural Connections from a Phase 3 Group of Graves at Shar-i Sokhta", M. Piperno, S. Salvatori, "Mesopotamien und Sein Nachbarn," Band 1, Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 1987, pgs. 79-84, Table XXII. The illustration is described as "The wooden gaming board found in grave IUP 731 at Shar-i Sokhta."  Gaming pieces were found in a pot or basket in the same grave, but it is not known if any of the pieces "belong" to the Shar-i Sokhta serpent board.   A quick comparison of the 1983 serpent gameboard and 20-squares game board from Sumer in the preceding paragraph shows that their lay-outs are identical and the Shar-i Sokhta serpent board is also a 20-squares game. The Persian Journal article describes the Burnt City game board as featuring "an engraved serpent coiling around itself for 20 times, thus producing 20 slots for the game".  The Shar-i Sokhta board described in the Piperno and Salvatori article also consists of 20 playing spaces created by a carved intertwined serpent.  The design similarities between the Burnt City board and the Shar-i Sokhta board discovered in 1983 are obvious. Have, in fact, two carved wooden serpent gameboards been discovered in Iran - one during or prior to 1983 and another in 2004? If two such gameboards have been discovered in Iran, this is a tremendously important archaeological discovery for board games historians, and it is worthy of much more publicity than it has received!  Sadly, this is not the case. The Location of the Discoveries.  Here is a map of the site where the Shar-i Sokhta serpent board was excavated in c. 1983 - notice the location of the discovery in relation to the position of the Helmand River (click on image to enlarge).   Where is the Burnt City located in which the serpent board described in the Persian Journal article was discovered?  An internet search provided a quick answer: Burnt City (Shahr-e Soukhteh) ItÕs complex of ancient monuments where is located in 56 km. to Zabol. ItÕs one of the largest and richest ancient regions in eastern Iranian plateau. This city, during its 1000-year life, was counted as a mirror of ancient Iranian civilization and rich culture since the year 3200 to 2108.c. (sic) and also largest city and civilization center of east world. This information is from a website of the Iranian Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Mines. Shar-i Sokhta and Shahr-e Soukhteh (the Burnt City) are the same place (despite the spelling discrepancies).  To make sure, I checked the location of Zabol in relation to the Helmand River. Place names and spellings can change over time, but geographic markers can remain the same for thousands of years and, where they change over time, they leave evidence that they were once there.  Encyclopedia Brittannica Online confirmed the location of the Helmand River, and where it ends - at a location near where the Afghan and Iranian border meet. Zabol is just to the east of the river's terminus, near Iran's eastern border with Afghanistan. HELMAND RIVER also spelled  Helmund , or  Hilmand , Persian  Darya-ye Helmand, Latin  Erymandrus  river in southwestern Afghanistan and eastern Iran, about 715 miles (1,150 km) long. Rising in the Baba Range in east-central Afghanistan, it flows southwestward across more than half the length of Afghanistan before flowing northward for a short distance through Iranian territory and emptying into the Helmand (Sistan) swamps on the Afghan-Iranian border. This map of part of the Helmand River is from the MSN Encarta Online World Atlas and Encyclopedia. Note the location of Zabol, just to the east of the Afghan border near the terminus of the Helmand River (the river is marked in yellow). Shar-i Sokhta (Shahr-e Soukhteh) is some 56 km. from Zabol, very close to the Afghanistan/Iran border, at the Helmand River.  The Sixty Pieces - Final Piece of the Puzzle.  "The oldest backgammon in the world along with 60 pieces has been unearthed beneath the rubbles of the legendary Burnt City.", the Persian Journal article did not contain a photograph of the 60 game pieces.  However, Piperno and Salvatori's article does contain a graphic (see left) of "Pawns and dice found in a basket in grave IUP 731."(7)  These gaming pieces and the Shar-i Sokhta serpent game board were both found in grave IUP 731.(8)   Conclusions We know that Shar-i Sokhta and the Burnt City, Shahr-e Soukhteh, are one and the same place; we know that a wooden gameboard with an intertwined serpent on its surface carving out 20 playing spaces was discovered there in c.1983 or earlier; we know that the 1983 gameboard has a description that is close to, if not identical with, the description of the Burnt City serpent gameboard; we know that game pieces and dice were found in the same tomb as the c. 1983 serpent gameboard and that game pieces and dice were also found in same Burnt City tomb in which the serpent gameboard identified in the 2004 Persian Journal article was discovered.  It is logical to conclude that the serpent board and gaming pieces discovered at Shar-i Sokhta as described in Piperno and Salvatori's article, and the serpent board and pieces discovered in the Burnt City as described in the Persian Journal article are, in fact, THE SAME BOARD AND PIECES.  The "backgammon" board described in the Persian Journal article was just a rehash of a discovery actually made over 20 years ago.  I leave it to our readers to ponder why such old news should be presented as "new." FOOTNOTES: (1) Photograph of Roman die from BC Galleries, a dealer in antiquities. (2)  Bell, R.C., "Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations," Dover: New York, 1960; Jack Botermans, Tony Burrett, Pieter van Delft, Carla van Splunteren, "The World of Games," Facts on File Inc.: New York, 1989. (3) Here is the text of a story about the serpent gameboard from Yahoo News.  It omits the photograph of the dice and the description of the serpent game board.  Instead, it contains a graphic of four Iranian soldiers sitting on a blanket surrounding what appears to be a modern-day backgammon board: Iran Lays Claim to World's Oldest Backgammon Set Tue Dec 7, 11:20 AM ET [2004] TEHRAN (AFP) - Archaeologists in Iran have said they have uncovered what they believe is the world's oldest backgammon set, which could make the country the cradle of board games. According to the Internet site of Iran's Cultural Heritage organisation, the game, complete with 60 pieces, was found in the ruins of the so-called Burnt City in Sistan-Baluchestan province the far southeast of the Islamic republic. The report said Iranian archeologists working on the relics of the 5,000-year-old civilisation believe the set is up to two centuries older than previous discoveries in Mesopotamian sites in what is now Iraq "The backgammon set reveals intriguing clues to the lifestyle of those people," said Mansour Sajjadi, head of the research team. "The board is rectangular and made of ebony, which did not grow in Sistan and merchants used to import it from India," he added, saying the set also displayed a high degree of craftsmanship. However, he said researchers were still trying to work out why the set had 60 pieces. Modern varieties of the game have 30 pieces. Backgammon, a blend of luck and strategy and still a favorite in the region, is believed to be the human race's oldest board game. Located near Zabol and the Afghan border, the Burnt City is believed to have been built 3200 BC and flourished until it was destroyed by fire in 2100 BC. (End) Notice the use of the present tense in the foregoing article "Archaeologists...said they have uncovered...," just as in the Persian Journal article. Here are the urls for a few more articles about the serpent gameboard mentioned in the November, 2004 Persian Journal article.  There is no guarantee how long these links will remain "alive":  http://www.payvand.com/news/04/dec/1029.html;  http://www.iran-heritage.org/research/backgammon.htm.  I am not aware of any articles about the serpent gameboard that appeared in scholarly journals or archaeology and history magazines geared to the general public. We would appreciate being advised of any such information by our readers, so that we can publish the sources here. (4) In fact, this very same graphic of two dice recently appeared in an article at  CAIS (Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies), Chess: Iranian or Indian Invention?, where the dice were identified as having been discovered in Shar-i Sokteh in 2005 and dated to the Achaemenid period (550-333 BCE).  On November 24, 2006 I sent an email to CAIS questioning this identification, since it is well established that the "Burnt City" was not reoccupied after its last fiery destruction (c. 2100 BCE) and certainly was not occupied during the Achaemenid period.  I received the following reply on November 25, 2006: Thanks for contacting CAIS. Please accept my sincere apologies, since that picture in question should not be in the Chess article in the first place. Also the date and provenance were stated wrong too. The dice was discovered in 2004 and ÒallegedlyÓ it is 5,000 years old. I wish to express my gratitude for notifying me about the mistake. I have asked the picture to be removed and replaced with the correct one. I checked the CAIS article on January 21, 2007 and the graphic of the two dice has been replaced with an image more appropriate to the article - one showing the seven chess pieces discovered at Afrasiab and dating to c. 762 CE. (5) C.L. Woolley and others, Ur Excavations, vol. II: The Royal Cemetery (London, The British Museum Press, 1934), p. 276, plate 95. See also "The Royal Game of Ur"  and http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/compass/ixbin/goto?id=OBJ1739  at the British Museum website.   (6) It is rare that archaeological discoveries are written about contemporaneously with their discovery. Sometimes decades elapse before field notes are published about significant archaeological excavations, and sometimes they are never published.  An article was written by M. Piperno in 1983 about the serpent board of Shar-i Sokhta, "Recent results and new perspectives from the research at the graveyard of Shar-i Sokhta, Sistan, Iran," in "Annali" vol. 43, leading me to believe that the board was discovered some time before Piperno wrote his 1983 article. (7) "Evidence of Western Cultural Connections from a Phase 3 Group of Graves at Shar-i Sokhta", M. Piperno, S. Salvatori, Mesopotamien und Sein Nachbarn, Band 1, Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 1987, pgs. 79-84, Table XXII, Fig. 5.  Thanks to Gerhard Josten who provided me with the images and information for the Shar-i Sokhta board, pieces and map. (8) Id.  "Fig. 4  The wooden gaming board found in grave IUP 731 at Shar-i Sokhta";  "Fig. 5  Pawns and dice found in a basket in grave IUP 731."