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Mind, Body, and the Cosmos: Chess and Backgammon in Ancient Persia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Touraj Daryaee
Touraj Daryaee*
Affiliation:
California State University, Fullerton
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Extract

Board games were played in many parts of the ancient world and so it is very difficult to attribute the origin of any board game to a particular region or culture. Board games have been found in ancient Mesopotamia, the oldest from the city of Ur, but one must also mention the game of Senet in ancient Egypt. Often board games were placed in the tombs of the pharaohs and sometimes the dead are shown playing with the gods, for example one scene shows Rameses III (c. 1270 B.C.) playing with Isis to gain access to the nether world. The importance of this image lies in the depiction of the cosmological and religious significance that ancient peoples attributed to board games—they were not just games played for pleasure. Reference to board games in Persia can be found as early as the Achaemenid period, where, according to Plutarch, Artaxerxes played a board game with dice.

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Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 35 , Issue 4: Sports and Games , Fall 2002 , pp. 281 - 312
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2002

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank H.-P. Schmidt and S. Adhami for reading the manuscript and making important comments on the essay and the Middle Persian text. I should also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments and Jerome Arkenberg for the technical support.

References

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