Royal Game of Ur / Game of 20 Squares

3D Model

Babylonian game

The Royal Game of Ur was played 5000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia. The game took its name from the royal tombs of the city of Ur (Iraq), where it was discovered in the 1920’s. Very popular in its time, the game of Ur, was gradually replaced by new games like the game Tabula (a direct ancestor of backgammon), and therefore its rules were forgotten, until British museum curator Irving Finkel decoded and reconstructed the rules from a terracotta tablet dated 177 BC.