The Royal Game of Ur

How the Royal Game of Ur is played

From the book's pages

No written rules survive; the book gives the presumed way of playing, worked out from the shape of the board and the finds in the graves.

• Two players with seven pieces each, black and white, which must go round and off the board along a route of twenty squares. Each follows their own path, as the arrows on the diagram show: up their own outer column, across the bridge and round the small section, then down the middle row.
• Three pyramid dice, marked on two of their four tips. Three marked tips up give 5, three unmarked 4, two unmarked 0, one unmarked 1.
• Before the game both throw for who begins.
• A piece enters the board with a throw of 1 or 5, onto the first or the fifth square. Both are rosettes, and so are two more on the route. When one of your pieces lands on a rosette, another piece of your colour may be placed on the first square.
• When the first fourteen squares have been covered, the piece is turned over: now it is on its way down the middle row, and is told apart from those on the way up.
• There is no limit to how many pieces may stand on one square.
• Only on the middle row and in the upper section can pieces be attacked: if a piece lands on a square where the opponent's stand, they are removed and must start over. Pieces on the way up are attacked only by pieces on the way up, and pieces on the way down only by pieces on the way down.
• The rosettes and the last square are sanctuaries, where both colours stand safe.
• A piece must land exactly on the last square. From there it is taken off the board with a throw of 4 — and if several stand there, all go off on one throw.

Read from the diagram

• The route, counted so that squares 1 and 5 are rosettes and the piece is turned after fourteen: 1–4 up your own outer column, 5 the middle rosette, 6–7 the bridge, 8 into the small section, 9–13 round it (both rosettes there), 14 back in the middle, 15–20 down the middle row. The bridge and the middle row are shared by both; there up and down meet.

My choices

• A throw of 0 is no move, and the turn passes; nobody throws again after a good throw, since the book does not mention it.
• Equal opening throws are thrown again. Does the winner of the opening get white? No — the colours are fixed: white on the left, black on the right; whoever throws highest moves first.
• The rosette's gift — another piece on square 1 — is taken automatically when you have a piece left off the board.
• The machine weighs each move by progress, capture, how exposed the piece is to a throw of 1, 4 or 5, and the way off.

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