Ancient board games Research Papers (original) (raw)

This volume, Life and Death in a Multicultural Harbour City: Ostia Antica from the Republic through Late Antiquity, edited by Arja Karivieri, includes 50 articles with numerous illustrations, written by international scholars active in the research of Ostia and Portus, the harbour city and the harbour area of ancient Rome.This volume is the result of the project "Segrerated or Integrated? - Living and Dying in the Harbour City of Ostia, 300 BCE- 700 CE," financed by the Academy of Finland and Tampere University (2015-2019), in collaboration with Parco Archeologico di Ostia Antica, Stockholm University (Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies), Soprintendenza Speciale Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio di Roma, and Centre of Molecular Anthropology for Ancient DNA Studies at the University of Rome "Tor Vergata", as well as University of Kent (School of European Culture and Languages) and Università Niccolò Cusano, Rome. This collaboration, including the Museum Centre Vapriikki at Tampere, Finland, Museo della Civiltà Romana at Rome and Museo Nazionale Romano, was also in the centre for the creation of the exhibition "Ostia, Gateway to Rome", now on display at Museum Centre Vapriikki until 10th January 2021. The volume includes also the catalogue of objects on display in the exhibition.

- by and +1
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- Ostia (Archaeology), Play and Games, Ancient board games, Arqueología romana / Roman archeology

Almost every human society has played games, from dice and board games to hunting and sport. But why are games such a universal human phenomenon? What exactly do games accomplish and what are their roles in societies? This course explores the concept of ‘gaming culture’ and seeks to develop and expand ideas on the role of games as a distinct human cultural phenomenon. We will explore games through the lenses of multiple fields, from anthropology and archaeology to sociology, psychology, and philosophy. We will actually play games, ancient and modern, in order to take a hands on and experimental approach in exploring themes and topics. Through such approaches and reflections, this course will equip students to more readily question how games are important and essential parts of human lives, in ways that are not entirely obvious or expected. Start your turn and see where the dice land!

- by Carl Walsh
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- Game studies, Video Games and Learning, Video Games, Ancient Sports/Athletics

Síntesis de una investigación sobre el juego prehispánico del patolli

- by Natasha Harlow
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- Material Culture Studies, Roman Britain, Ancient board games, Roman Archaeology

Since before the beginning of recorded history, board games have been a constant source of fascination and entertainment for human beings. From 7000-year-old bone dice and the Ancient Egyptian religious game of Senet to the spread of chess throughout medieval Eurasia, the history of board games is as sprawling, oftentimes mysterious, and complex as history itself. Though sometimes correctly characterized as meaningless fun or simple distractions, board games have also been assigned varying degrees of spiritual, cultural, and competitive importance. Often this importance can be examined not only to learn more about board games but also about the people who played them. In History of Board Games Throughout the Ages, we take a general look at the history of board games from ancient to modern times, including some of the most popular and influential board games ever played, their various roles in the societies and cultures they occupied, and the reasons why board games are so compelling and fun for us humans in the first place.

In the rescue excavation project, conducted in 2001-2002 at the private property plot K. Diakogeorgiou at the city of Rhodes, an incised board for the nine men’s Morris game was discovered.
The board game was clearly incised at the lower surface of an ancient roof tile fragment, after its disposal. The historical analysis and the geographical distribution of the game, points out that it was already known in Roman times, even though finds from Roman Greece are scarce. Furthermore, the game was well known and favorable in Medieval Europe and is attested also in many crusader sites in the Holy lands, as well as in sites from Greece associated with the presence of Western Europeans in late Medieval times. In the aforementioned historical framework the board game from Rhodes can easily be associated with the presence of the order of St. John, the Hospitalliers, on the island.
Nevertheless the stratigraphical data, the spatial analysis of the plot, in association with its proximity to the medieval fortifications of the city of Rhodes, and the fact that the game was already known in Islamic world from the 9th century, lead to another assumption, that the board game could have been also used in the intermissions of battles during the second siege of Rhodes by the Ottomans in 1522.

In 2010 a Roman token was discovered in the mud of the Thames near Putney Bridge in London. When the token was discovered to have an erotic image on one side and a Roman numeral on the other, and was identified in a Museum of London press release as a rare Roman “brothel token”, the press reported on the story in the expected manner, for example: “A Roman coin that was probably used by soldiers to pay for sex in brothels has been discovered on the banks of the River Thames” (Daily Telegraph, 4 Jan 2012) and “Bronze discs depicting sex acts, like the one discovered in London, were used to hire prostitutes – and directly led to the birth of pornography during the Renaissance” (The Guardian, 4 Jan 2012). Even before this particular spate of media interest, these curious tokens have generated confusion, speculation and prurience – often simultaneously. They are of interest to games scholars because the speculation often includes the suggestion these objects may have had a ludic function, and were used as game counters. This paper will look at some of the proposals that have been offered by way of explanation of these peculiar objects.

- by Eddie Duggan SFHEA
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- Game studies, Ancient Roman Numismatics, Roman coins, Board Games
- by Ezio Zanini
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- Medieval History, Ancient board games

Board games are rarely the subject of scientifi c studies. Despite this fact, many documents concerning these games are known throughout the world, especially in Europe. They appear mainly in antiquity in the territory of the Roman Empire and Germanic territories. The aim of this paper is to present objects related to board games stored mainly in the collections of the Slovak National Museum-Museums in Martin and the Považské Museum in Žilina. These are objects that have never been published or somehow popularized. The subject of the article are gaming stones-calculi.

- by Zuzana Staneková
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- Prehistoric Archaeology, Roman Period, Board Games, Ancient board games

On se propose, pour interpréter l’usage, par Héraclite, du jeu de pions (petteia) dans le fr. 52 D.-K., de suivre l’hypothèse offerte par Platon lorsqu’il construit une analogie fondée sur le même type de jeu en Lois, X 903d3-e1. On défendra dans un premier temps l’idée que le passage platonicien établit une analogie entre le déplacement des pions au jeu des cinq lignes (pente grammai), un jeu associé par l’imagerie athénienne aux héros homériques, et la circulation cosmique des âmes qui en règle le destin. On tentera ensuite de lire une analogie similaire, faisant usage du même jeu, dans le fr. 52 D.-K. d’Héraclite, pour souligner le point fondamental de divergence avec Platon : faire jouer ce jeu d’adultes à un enfant et non à un dieu omniscient. Le fait qu’Héraclite fasse parfois de l’enfant une figure de l’ignorance et qu’il l’associe à ses sarcasmes à l’encontre de la prétendue sagesse d’Homère, nous amènera à considérer qu’Héraclite, sans nier qu’il y ait bien une circulation cosmique des âmes conforme au jeu décrit, trouve dans l’image de l’enfant qui avance ses pions au petit bonheur une manière de signifier à quel point l’ordre cosmique déjoue les calculs des hommes.

- by Arnaud Macé
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- Plato, Heraclitus, Ancient board games

An outline of the early "Kriegsspiel" developement from chessboard.

- by Jan Schlürmann
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- Tactics (Military Science), Ancient board games, War Games
- by timothy kendall
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- Ancient Egyptian Religion, Egyptology, Sudan, Ancient Egyptian Iconography
- by Thierry Depaulis
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- History of Games, Ancient board games, History of Board Games
- by Michael Sebbane
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- Archaeology, Ancient board games

Rescue excavations of Old Petrovaradin unearthed two Larger Merels gaming boards crafted between the second half of the 13th and the 15th century from old, secondhand, repurposed bricks. After providing a sketch of the site’s research history, the paper describes the boards and examines the archaeological context they came from. Chronologically closest and territorially nearest analogies for these boards come from Vrbas and Bač. A brief overview of historical and archaeological contexts associated with Larger Merels boards and gaming paraphernalia across Europe offers clues for possible interpretations of similar finds from the south of the Carpathian Basin. They testify that in the late Middle Ages game(s) on Larger Merels boards were played in various social contexts in settlements of different sizes and importance.

- by Aleksandar Sajdl
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- Medieval Archaeology, Ancient board games, Middle Ages, History of Board Games

Os jogos de tabuleiro são reflexos culturais, nasceram como ritos religiosos e mitológicos, alçaram a condição de objeto de entretenimento, e por fim, foram subvertidos e transformados em forma de expressão artística. Essa dissertação de caráter teórico-prático investiga esse último estágio, e pesquisa artistas e obras de gamearte analógica visando compreender o processo criativo por trás dos jogos de tabuleiro de arte, campo ainda pouco explorado. Esta pesquisa se apresenta pioneira, pois não há estudos sobre os jogos de tabuleiros através da arte no Brasil. A primeira categorização dos jogos de tabuleiro brasileiros que pertencem as definições de gamearte. Também se propõe a apresentar a relevância e persistência dos jogos analógicos em uma contemporaneidade digital. Essas investigações servem de arcabouço teórico reflexivo para o desenvolvimento simultâneo da prática poética dessa pesquisa, um jogo de tabuleiro artístico autoral.

- by José Loures
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- Ludology, Board Games, Board Game Design, Games
- by Eddie Duggan SFHEA
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- Board Games, Games, Ancient board games

Por favor no lo descarguen. Estoy actualizando el texto! Gracias ..... /// Backgammon es un juego antiquísimo, aquí presento una introducción para quien no lo conoce y sus reglas y además una variante propia en su forma de jugarlo./Backgammon is a very old game, I present an introduction for those who do not know and rules. In addition I propose a variant to play it differently.

The inventories of the Collection of Prehistory of the Natural History Museum Vienna register a substantial amount of dice and gaming counters of both the Latène and Roman eras from sites in the former Habsburg Empire: Stradonice in Bohemia, Brigetio / Komárom – Szőny in Hungary and Gurina in Austria. Those finds were already acquired in the 19th century, but without any further information concerning their contexts. Based on typological and chronological details the present paper focuses on evident changes in the nature of dice and gaming pieces from the later Iron Age to the Roman period. Although the information as regards their contexts is scarce, it is possible to underline the cultural-historical significance of those small finds based on Celtic and Roman contexts from settlements and graves as well as literary and pictorial sources from Antiquity.

- by Kordula Gostencnik
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- Cultural History, Cultural Studies, Archaeology, Classical Archaeology

The game related objects found in Kush illustrate both Egyptian and Greco-Roman influences. A group of graffiti boards and rows of holes that point at mancala games both present a later influence that may have an Arab or African origin, respectively. Together they illustrate a continuous outside influence on playing practices in Kush but little evidence for locally developed games.
The difficulty of dating graffiti boards and the absence of wooden boards in excavations so far prevent conclusions on the presence of African or Nubian games in the Kingdom of Kush. Yet, the complex dispersal of games at the borders of Africa, the Mediterranean and the Near East and the unknown distribution of, particularly mancala, games in ancient times make Kush an important crossroad for future research in board games.

- by Alex de Voogt
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- Nubian-Egyptian Relations, Board Games, Ancient board games, Meroitic Studies

Khēḷiya originated as a joke term for the tendency to find board game patterns at archaeological sites, especially among students and alumni of the Centre for Extramural Studies and the INSTUCEN Trust. Serendipitously however, it has turned into an unanticipated survey of board games etched on the floors of various monuments throughout the country. Here we report board games brought to our attention from Hampi, Khokhari, Mahabalipuram, Badami, Nasik and Ellora. While several are well-known games, some are now fossils as their intangible (rules) and perishable (pieces and dice) are lost. We see Project Khēḷiya as the beginnings of an archaeological survey of games throughout India, fronted by amateurs, as a project to document our intangible heritage. This is of urgent need as any monuments are being refloored, leading to a permanent loss of this heritage.

- by Raamesh Gowri Raghavan and +2
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- Ancient board games, Indian Board Games

What do dice and gods have in common? What is the relationship between dice divination and dice gambling? This interdisciplinary collaboration situates the tenth-century Chinese Buddhist "Divination of Maheśvara" within a deep Chinese backstory of divination with dice and numbers going back to at least the 4th century BCE. Simultaneously, the authors track this specific method of dice divination across the Silk Road and into ancient India through a detailed study of the material culture, poetics, and ritual processes of dice divination in Chinese, Tibetan, and Indian contexts. The result is an extended meditation on the unpredictable movements of gods, dice, divination books, and divination users across the various languages, cultures, and religions of the Silk Road.
Link: https://brill.com/view/title/59960

- by Brandon Dotson
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- Buddhism, Chinese Buddhism, Actor Network Theory, Divination
- by Eddie Duggan SFHEA
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- Board Games, Games, Ancient board games
- by Sachin Tiwary and +1
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- Ancient board games, Ancient Greek Games, Ancient Toys and Games

Board games are often used as a plot motif in modern genre fiction, especially in detective and adventure stories. In these types of narrative a well-known pattern of storytelling or literary structure (e.g. the treasure hunt, the detection of serial crimes, the iniatory course, or the medieval tale collection) is reworked and adapted to the rules and phases of a board game such as chess, jeu de l’oie, or the tarot card pack. This literary practice is very ancient and may be traced back to a number of novelistic compositions of the ancient Near East, dating from the first millennium B.C. to late antiquity. In the Demotic Egyptian Tale of Setne Khaemwaset, from the Saite period, the protagonist Setne plays a board game (probably senet) with the mummy of a long dead and buried magician, in order to gain a powerful book of spells. The widespread Near-Eastern story-pattern of the magical competition is here superimposed on the procedure of a celebrated Egyptian game. In a late Hellenistic Greek novella inspired by the Odyssey (Apion of Alexandria, FGrH 616 F36) Penelope’s suitors play an elaborate game of marbles (petteia) in order to determine which one of them will marry the queen. This is a playful rewriting of the famous bow contest of the Homeric epic. A Sasanian novelistic work, the Wizārišn ī čatrang, adapts the age-old legend of the riddle contest of kings; the riddles are replaced with board games (chess and backgammon), which the opponents invent and propose to each other as difficult puzzles for solution. In all these texts the board game becomes a central symbol of the transformative and innovative power of literary narrative.

The paper focuses on 6 unpublished metal artefacts from the British School at Athens Museum collection and from the Paul and Alexandra Canellopoulos Museum, which enrich the already generous corpus of bronze replicas of the astragalus bone unfortunately devoid of a secure archaeological provenance, traditionally interpreted as ancient weights. Based on a broader investigation of the archaeological evidence in a context perspective, the contribution offers a reassessment of this reading consolidated in archaeological literature and refects on the reasons behind the selection of the astragalus image for this class of materials: the analysis of the metallic replicas unearthed in Greek archaeological contexts and their depositional features allows to emphasize the votive value of these items – rather than functional – and to suggest the meaning of the astragalus shape – selected also as coin type – as “substitute” of animal sacrifice.

- by Barbara Carè
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- Classical Archaeology, Zooarchaeology, Ritual, Ancient Religion
- by Eddie Duggan SFHEA
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- Early modern board games, Board Games, Games, Ancient board games

Board games are particularly well represented in the archaeological record of ancient Egypt. Their connections with ancient Egyptian religion means there are also references to gaming in religious texts and funerary artwork. Games by their very nature have a social element to them, they usually require more than one player and are often played with friends or family. When religion and ritual is attached to such games they can take on magical properties. In ancient Egypt this could be your ticket to the underworld or even a system which allowed communication with the dead.

- by Phillip Robinson
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- Ancient Egyptian Religion, Egyptology, Social Anthropology, Egyptian Archaeology

After the fall of the Meroe kingdom, three entities – Nobadia, Early Makuria, and Alwa (Alodia) – emerged in northeast Africa between the 4th and the 6th centuries AD. Richly furnished elite cemeteries with tombs of the Nobadian kings are known from Qustul and Ballaña in Lower Nubia (Emery and Kirwan 1938), but until now no royal tombs of Early Makuria have been identified. A comparative analysis of some recently excavated adornments and ornaments from the tumulus cemetery of el-Zuma in Upper Nubia have now enabled the Early Makuria royal tombs (AD 450–550) to be placed there. The assemblages from three large tumuli are dominated by personal adornments (beads, pendants, earrings, chains, crosses, and a ring), royal regalia (cabochons and settings), and other decorated items (metal sheets, an intarsia and ivory gaming pieces). Apart from beads of various materials, like marine mollusk shell, ostrich eggshell, faience and stone, which were made probably in local workshops, the remaining items were imports from the Mediterranean and Sri Lanka/South India (glass beads in the latter case). Moreover, many of the decorated objects and the techniques used to make them find parallels in the elite Nobadian cemeteries of Qustul and Ballaña, hinting at the royal origin of some of the Early Makuria tomb owners at el-Zuma. These parallels induce the thought that there was a single workshop in late antique Nubia producing artifacts for the elite.

- by Barbara Carè
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- Archaeology, Classical Archaeology, Funerary Archaeology, Counter Culture
- by Sam Wolff and +1
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- Ancient board games
- by Marie-Lys Arnette
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- Ancient board games

The late fourth millennium BC brought many developments in Egypt. Among these was the emergence of standardised board games. The earliest of these appearing in the archaeological record is the game mehen. This board game consists of a circular board with a racetrack in shape of a coiled serpent, zoomorphic playing pieces and marbles as counters. Even though the exact rules are not known it is suggested that the game must have been a race game with strategic elements. Besides its ludic functions the game seems to have had religious and ritualistic meanings for the Egyptians. Mehen appears in its characteristic form initially in the late Naqada period. Further game boards from the Early Dynastic Period indicate an elaboration of the board game and an apparent popularity. In the Old Kingdom mehen starts to appear on a wall painting, inscriptions and reliefs as well. With the fall of the Old Kingdom mehen too falls into oblivion and is evidently never played again. Due to the sparse archaeological evidence, it remains difficult to interpret the meaning and the biography of this board game practice, besides being religiously entangled. In this thesis, the cultural memory theory by J. Assmann shall serve as a framework to study the practice of mehen. The game’s incorporation into the culture of the Egyptians, its maintenance and elaboration as active part of the Egyptian’s culture and its ultimate disappearance shall be investigated under the concepts and terminology of the cultural memory. This thesis may be seen as an attempt to investigate in how far a theory may be applied on archaeological material in order to illustrate its cultural transformations. The role of mehen as a social delimiter and object of social identity-establishing shall be of greater concern within this thesis.

This study contends through a formal analysis of extant rules and material gaming pieces that the medieval board game hnefa-tafl served as an important example of cultural and historical record for the Icelandic Commonwealth. Due to the piecemeal and recondite nature of academic research concerning hnefa-tafl itself, an initial objective of this study is to propose a dice-based reconstruction that makes use of available archaeological and literary evidence originating from subsequent tafl games. Because detailed information about these descendant games survives in more complete fashion, the scant material relating to the rules and layout of hnefa-tafl found within earlier Icelandic sagas is supplemented in this diachronic study with conclusions drawn from later tafl games. Players must understand not only the logical rules of play, but also the cultural framework informing its representation. To this end, game mechanics and decision-making in hnefa-tafl are further explored through the cultural lens of saga literature, which serves as the principle source material for fully understanding how much of hnefa-tafl depended on player agency and to what end the incorporation of chance-based gameplay affected interpersonal relations between players. Evidence suggests that these interactions were characterised by an ex post facto distinction made from dice rolls distinguishing lucky and unlucky individuals, which in turn presupposed that fortune was inherent to the player as part of their personality, at once both the cause and the expression of socially recognised accomplishment or condemnation. Such fatalistic aspects inherent to tafl play are also identified in eschatological imagery recounting the development and demise of the Icelandic Commonwealth, which leads this study to conclude that hnefa-tafl constituted a mode of recollection specific to board games wherein societies invest material apparatus with connotations of their owners’ cultural identities.

- by Gavin Davies
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- Anglo-Saxon Studies, Material Culture Studies, Old Norse Literature, Welsh History

Play, psychologists tell us, is a critical part of human existence. And if animal behaviourists are allowed a word in, play is critical to the muscular and mental development of most mammalian children. While a number ofsports may be attested from the earliest periods of human existence, sedentary games of skill and calculation go way into the past too, perhaps even before humanity learned to write. Indeed, even today, most traditional game boards are ephemeral: they are carried around in human heads, and etched, chalked, drawn or painted onto a suitable surface at the start of play, and abandoned soon after. The same applies to rules: the best and longest lasting games have the simplest rules, that can yet lead to complex and engaging play for hours. The play pieces and dice themselves are resistant to such mentalisation, but can be improvised on the spot using pebbles, sticks, shells, coins and fragments of pottery. Yet if the Brahmajāla Sutta is to be believed, Tathagata’s contemporaries played a game of Ākāsa (Majjhimasīla, Dīgha Nikāya: Brahmajāla Sutta), in which board, pieces, dice and moves were all played imagined in the air between players, the entire game narrative being held in the mind alone.

- by Raamesh Gowri Raghavan
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- Ancient board games, Indian Board Games

A discussion of the language of CIL 4. 3494

- by James Clackson
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- History of Latin Language, Ancient board games, Pompeiian Graffiti

Dans le cadre du projet de recherche Locus Ludi. The Cultural Fabric of Play and Games in Classical Antiquity, financé par le Conseil Européen de la Recherche (ERC advanced grant # 741520 www.locusludi.ch), une réflexion collective s’imposait sur le célèbre fragment d’Héraclite : « Le temps est un enfant qui joue en déplaçant des pions : la royauté de l’enfant ». Les quatorze contributions de ce volume proposent chacune différentes approches et lectures de cette phrase énigmatique. Tout un livre sur une phrase, tant elle pose de questions et autorise de réponses. Chaque mot mérite son enquête
avec le débat sur ses significations. Comment comprendre l’aiôn ? « Temps », « vie », « temps de la vie », « force vitale », « existence », « éternité » ? Qui est l’enfant, quel âge a-t-il ? À quel jeu surtout joue-t-il ? L’ouvrage offre un bilan des différentes interprétations, philosophiques, politiques, oraculaires, des conditions de la transmission
du fragment, de sa place dans l’oeuvre d’Héraclite, du contexte de production, des rapports avec d’autres poètes et philosophes, à l’histoire des jeux de pions et de dés, tout en s’interrogeant sur la dimension philosophique du jeu. Des pistes novatrices sont ouvertes. Dire qu’un enfant joue revient à énoncer l’évidence, sauf si l’enfant est autre chose qu’un simple enfant. Les enfants ne seraientils pas, dans et par le jeu, une image d’Héraclite lui-même ? Un
Héraclite poète et joueur, poète parce que joueur. Le regard posé sur l’enfance doit aussi être remis en question. Loin d’instrumentaliser l’enfant pour dénoncer l’incompétence des adultes, Héraclite met en scène un enfant incarnant l’Aiôn en tant que force vitale source d’éternel renouvellement. Le déplacement de ses pions symbolise son apprentissage de l’ordre et désordre du monde. Le jeu instaure un équilibre temporaire dans le cosmos, et la royauté de l’enfant devient synonyme de sa capacité à gérer un monde menacé par le chaos. Et le jeu, avec les mots et les dés, ne finit ici jamais. David Bouvier est professeur de langue et littérature grecques à
l’Université de Lausanne et chargé de cours de mythologie à l’EPFL. Il a été professeur invité à l’Université de Chicago, à l’EHESS et à l’Université de Pise. Ses travaux portent principalement sur la poésie homérique et sa réception. Véronique Dasen est professeure d’archéologie classique à l’Université de Fribourg, et spécialiste d’anthropologie culturelle antique. Ses nombreuses publications portent sur l’histoire du corps, de l’enfant, du genre et du jeu. Elle dirige le projet Locus ludi financé par l’European Research Council (no 741520).

- by Veronique Dasen
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- Philosophy, Classics, Greek Oracles and Divination, Heraclitus

Senet—perhaps the most famous of all the games of antiquity—has captured the imagination of scholars and lay people alike. Recognized as a game played by the Egyptians since the beginnings of archaeological research, and one of the first ancient games to be recognized outside of Greek and Roman texts, it has been one of the most discussed games of antiquity both in academia and in popular media. Nevertheless, understanding of this game remains incomplete. New evidence and more nuanced interpretations of old evidence continues to expand on our knowledge of senet. This paper seeks to correct some of the misconceptions about the game, which often seek to trace the development of later board games to senet. Furthermore, it aspires to encourage scholars from all disciplines who study games to critically reevaluate common conceptions of games relevant to their regions and time periods.

- by Walter Crist
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- Archaeology, Ancient Egyptian History, Board Games, Ancient board games

Nothing invigorates nor expresses a culture quite like a national sport or game. These events could be viewed as outlets functioning not only as a means of entertainment, but as a manner through which competitors strive to sculpt their minds and bodies with the mentality, prowess, and raw strength that epitomise the ideals of the associated culture(s). The sports and games of a culture can lead to the creation and reinforcement of generalisations—thereby ultimately leading to a fabrication and proliferation of stereotypes. However, through careful observation of the rules, cultural ideas, and messages contained within these games, one may be able to see past the stereotypes and gain a glimpse of the true character of the associated culture. Using the relationship between the game of chess and medieval European culture as a comparison, this paper will examine the Iron Age Scandinavian board game of hnefatafl in order to dispel misconceptions and suggest an alternative, more constructive, means of describing Late Iron Age Scandinavian culture.