Backgammon History

  Backgammon is rightfully considered one of the most ancient games. It originates from ancient civilization of Sumer, which was a source of many gambling and simple games. First evidence of it was found in 1920s by British archeologists in an ancient royal grave. Of course, the boards only resembled modern backgammon, but they were real ancestors – there were dice, board and checkers.


  Other possible ancestors of backgammon were found in Ancient Egypt. These findings discovered that the game was available both for aristocracy and for common people. And what is interesting – they made mechanical dice box – a device made for avoiding cheating.

  Romans didn’t stand aside from the game. They had their own ancient variation of backgammon – though we can’t be sure because no rules or dice survived, only paintings and murals on the walls. The game was very popular and even had three names – Alea (dice), Tabulae (tables) and “ludus duodecim scriptorum” – the twelve-line game.

  Some explorers think that backgammon possibly originates from Indian game Parcheese that resembles backgammon very much. Others call variants of other Asian countries as the source of backgammon – sunoroku in Japan, shwan-liu in China, len sake or saka in Thailand, ssang-ryouk in Korea and main tabal in Malaya.

  As for Europe and its backgammon ancestors, Greeks played one of the versions, but only Romans started spreading the game throughout Europe. As mentioned above, they played on the 12-line board; the difference with modern backgammon was three cubes. But those who made the game really popular were the Crusaders. They took one of the backgammon versions called nards or nard-shir from Arabians and brought it to England.