Popular ANCIENT EGYPTIAN Game Came From AZERBAIJAN?

The ancient game of fifty-eight holes was played across a wide geographic area, from north Africa to southwestern Asia. Most of the research into it compares the different types of game boards and its different layouts, as well as suggesting what the rules may have been. Now, a new study on game boards excavated from Azerbaijan looks into how the game may have been transmitted. Interestingly, unlike the wooden and ceramic game boards found in other areas, those in Azerbaijan are pecked into large stone slabs making them immovable which means it's improbable that they were imported. This, along with other evidence, also leads the authors of the paper to suggest that the game may have originated in southwestern Asia rather than Egypt as is generally thought.

#ancienthistory #ancientgames #RealArchaeology

✨ IN THIS EPISODE

00:00 Introduction
01:04 The game of fifty-eight holes
04:07 Game boards excavated from Azerbaijan
07:46 Cultural influences

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✨ REFERENCES

Crist W, Abdullayev R. Herding with the Hounds: The Game of Fifty-eight Holes in the Abşeron Peninsula. (2024). European Journal of Archaeology, 1-20. doi:10.1017/eaa.2024.24

✨ PHOTOGRAPH CREDITS

Images about the ancient game research, credit: García Sanjuán L, et al., in the paper referenced above.

Public domain
Game of fifty-eight holes game board and game pieces from ancient Egypt

[barrywalser]

I have a picture in my head of the cattle herders, isolated in the hills, playing this game to pass the time. Thanks Laura!

[floydriebe]

yes! love the peg board! kinda looks like my home-made cribbage little fancier, tho😮

[vulpesvulpes]

Missed the premier again! I was in cardio-rehab. They asked me how many pushups I could do. I told them I’m usually good for 4-5 of the orange flavoured ones at one sitting.

Not game boards! Those are electrical “bread boards” used for hand wiring up circuit boards. The better to utilise the Bagdad battery and the ground energy from the pyramids. Lacking evidence of printed circuit boards they had to hand-wire them.

Besides. Look at me! Do I look like I play games? Of course not. I doubt they did either.

Fox out

[timkbirchico]

good vid, yes looks like cribbage, maybe it was used to keep the score of a game of dice or similar. Thanks

[madderhat]

Now this is going to keep me awake all night. So many questions.

[aidanmacdougall]

Have they established the rules? Would be interesting to see how it played😊. Not surprised that there were different variations in rules, much like pool, etc today. Great video, cheers 👍😊

[floydriebe]

well, i was early for once but, the chat and my ability to chat was non- existant😮😢 i tried several things....the chat would come up but, nothing was there and i couldn't add anything!!??!! whasup wid dat!?! anyhoo, very interesting...ancient folk were just like needed something fun to pass the time😊 to gouge a board into stone shows just how important it was to undertaking. i made a cribbage board out of a piece of 1x4 and that was hard enough, let alone chipping holes in rock😉 now, i can't help wondering what they used for the dice? bones? 🤔 anyone know? (dadratted mystery....gonna mess with my mind til i find out😢)

hokay, cool vid, my dear Laura! maybe i'll be able to chat on the next go-round😏...see you then👍

[barrywalser]

I’m going to be a little late for this one. I’ll catch up!

[aidanmacdougall]

Looks like an ancient cribbage board 😊

[JonFrumTheFirst]

My guess - every time you brought back the head of an enemy, you got to move one hole. Starting at opposite ends, first one around wins.

[TheColonelKlink]

Is this the same game depicted in an early scene with Pharaoh Sethi (Cedric Hardwicke) and his daughter Nefretiri (Anne Baxter) in Cecil B. DeMille's epic film The Ten Commandments (1956)?

[scottzema]

So why 58 holes? Religious significance or even astronomical significance, scientific knowledge, spread across many cultures? There must have been some sort of mania related to the game for some important reason. The same number of 58 holes everywhere; do they actually vary in number? Otherwise becomes sort of a romantic universal secret code in an exaggerated sense. Could an Egyptian and an Afghan both explain the same game layout in the same way in the same detail? Maybe more interestingly, that game can act as a sort of date marker for any cultures associated with it. These objects can track the trade networks as well; I think hugely ignored, considering that certain products must have been bartered for in a huge trading system from the most ancient times, such as flint or plant drugs or seashell beads or minerals or seasonal food or other specialized products, by even say species preceding our own, such as the Neanderthals in the region from perhaps hundreds of thousands of years past.

Again considering the popularity of this board game within a fairly specific time frame across a broad stretch of territory, I have to ask the following question, asked rhetorically. And that is if even mere Middle Kingdom officials could export or import a game does it sound reasonable that the Egyptians (or even the English in the time of Stonehenge) would have been in blissful ignorance of the Late Neolithic invention of the wheel, nay even given its use from about 3, 500 B.C. in Mesopotamia? And that the Egyptians were awakened only out of their ignorant stupor by charioted Hyksos invaders like TWO THOUSAND YEARS after the wheel came into use in the region?

Is there a theory behind the stone vertical and other petroglyphs of the game? As a model for setting up the game in a stick in the soil? How to play those?