Chess Quest : Twenty Squares - Jan Newton, November 2005

Chessquest
The Serpent Game Board of Iran: Much Ado About - Nothing...
Jan Newton - November, 2005
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 3,000 years old? Let's take a close look at this article and see if it stands up to scrutiny.

Questions

Question 1: Are those dice (used as a graphic in the article) really 5,000 years old?

A quick internet check of the archaeological record shows that six-sided square dice aren't found until around 900 BCE (Etruscan) and were later still 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 date back earlier, to at least 2650 BCE, when they were used for Egyptian games.(2)   Prior to the use of cubic 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 to determine the number of moves for a particular game piece. If the dice shown in the "Persian Journal" article are really 5,000 years old, this is a tremendous discovery and would greatly expand the experts' current knowledge of the known time-line for the development of cubical dice.

If this IS a great new discovery, though, why didn't it get much more publicity and press coverage?(3) What I think actually happened here is that whoever put this article together pulled a stock file photo to "jazz up" the article, since - conspicuously, glaringly and oh-so-obviously, it does not contain a photograph of the PRIZE piece featured in the article - the serpent game board! Really, fellas, rather amateurish, don't ya think?

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! NADA! 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. There is NO EVIDENCE GIVEN to support the article's statements about the game board. It seems this is just another case if Iranian hyperbole run amok.

Question 3: When, exactly, was this game board discovered?

The article gives the impression that the serpent game board had just recently been discovered (i.e., near the date of the "Persian Journal" article, December, 2004). Indeed, it is written in the present tense - the board HAS BEEN UNEARTHED; but no actual date of discovery 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?

Two answers come to mind: (1) there was NO discovery of a serpent game board and the entire article is, in fact, a fraud; or (2) a game board WAS discovered, but it was not discovered at any time in the close conjunction with the "Persian Journal" article and it is reporting old news.

Question 4: Why is there no photograph of the Burnt City serpent game board in the article?

The BOARD is the star of the article. Why then, no photograph? Could it be because (1) there is no such board; or (2) showing the board would give away the game. Google image searches for "Burnt City serpent game board" over the intervening months since the December, 2004 "Persian Journal" article first appeared have revealed - ZERO - images.

Given these questions, it seemed obvious that THIS IS A JOB FOR (trumpet fanfare - ta ta ta TA! and drum roll, please...) SUPER GODDESSCHESS RESEARCHERS!!!!

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, and they have been dated to c. 2600-2400 BCE. I assume that the "Persian Journal" article's reference to "one" board that had been excavated in Mesopotamia is 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.(4)

The most obvious place to start is the distinctive design of the board as described in the "Persian Journal" article - an intertwined serpent marking out twenty playing squares - which the article inferred was unique and older than the game boards excavated in Sumer. However, based on its description, it is not a unique design. The board sounds identical to the design of a game board that was featured in my article Goddess Iconography in Ancient Game Boards presented to a meeting of chess historians in Amsterdam November 30 - December 2, 2001, sponsored by the Initiative Group Konigstein ("IGK"). That game board was written about in 1987, and I believe the discovery, at Shar-i Sokhta, dates back at least to 1983.(4)

Here is a picture 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 this serpent game board with 20-squares game board pictured in the preceding paragraph shows that their lay-outs are identical and the Shar-i Sokhta serpent board is, in fact, 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 comprises 20 playing spaces created by a carved intertwined serpent (see image above left - there are 20 spaces marked on the board: 6 spaces in the left rectangle (3x2); 2 spaces on the "bridge" connecting the smaller and larger rectangles; and 12 spaces (3x4) in the right rectangle.) The design similarities between the Burnt City board as described and the Shar-i Sokhta board as appears in the photograph (above left) are obvious.

Have, in fact, two carved wooden serpent game boards been discovered in Iran - one sometime around or prior to 1983 and another one in 2004? If two such game boards 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!

The Location of the Discoveries. Here is a map of the site where the Shar-i Sokhta serpent board was excavated - 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 where 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 21008.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.

Hmmmm. It sure seems that Shar-i Sokhta and Shahr-e Soukhteh (the Burnt City) are ONE AND THE SAME PLACE! Just to make sure, I checked the location of Zabol in relation to the Helmand River. Encyclopedia Brittannica Online confirmed the location of the Helmand River, and where it ends - at a location along the Afghan and Iranian borders, and Zabol is just to the east:

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 (click on the "South" button to get an image of the map). 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"; unfortunately, the "Persian Journal" article also 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."(6) These gaming pieces and the Shar-i Sokhta serpent game board were both found in grave IUP 731.(7)

Conclusions
We know that Shar-i Sokhta and the Burnt City, Shahr-e Soukhteh, are one and the same place; we know that a carved wooden serpent game board was discovered there in circa 1983 or earlier; we know that the 1983 game board bears an identical description to the Burnt City game board; we know that game pieces and dice were found in the same tomb with the 1983 game board. 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 at 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 (and not a very good one) of a discovery made over 20 years ago.

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 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 internet addresses for a few more articles (all are rehashes of the "Persian Journal" article from December, 2004). 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.

(4) 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.

(5) 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.

(6) "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.

(7) 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."