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9:30am on Sunday, 21st July, 2019:

Minoan Game

Anecdote

We visited the palace of Knossos yesterday, as, it seems, did half the population of the island. It was impressive, and several well-placed ropes to stop use from going up certain steps or crossing certain pieces of ruin meant that at times it was difficult to find the exit. I suspect the reason for the ropes was to impress upon us that this was the site of the original labyrinth, although fortunately there was no minotaur in the centre, just a long queue to look at a throne through glass.

Forget that, though. Look what was found at the site:



It's a boardgame. This is at least 3,500 years old, and currently lives in the Heraklion museum. It looks far more sophisticated than the game the Ancient Egyptians were playing around this time, Senet. Naturally, the Minoans declined to write down the rules, so no-one has a clue how to play it. Assuming the four pieces shown are the only ones needed, it looks as if it may have been asymmetric as there are definitel lines at the bottom of one of the pieces that make it different from the others. Interestingly, it doesn't seem to come with dice.

Of coure, there's always the possibility it's not a game but some kind of decoration, but it does have the look of one. It's also possible that some of the items in the museum identified as other things are in fact games (particularly some "seed containers" that strike me as being more like some variant on Mancala boards).

It's good to know that the Minoans didn't sspend all their time building palaces and being destroyed by tsunamis, though.




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Copyright © 2019 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).