Dicing with Destiny

Games Britannia

Part One: "Dicing with Destiny"
Presented by Benjamin Woolley. Duration: 59 minutes.
First broadcast on BBC4 in December 2009 as part of the Game On season.


The Stanway Game [02:15]

At a gravel quarry in Stanway, just outside Colchester, in 1996, archaeologists began excavating five enclosures dating from the iron age, when Britain was under Roman rule. The enclosures had been identified from aerial photography and the quarry company allowed archaeologists to undertake the excavations ahead of the advancing quarry line.

The enclosures were burial sites for indigenous British people (they were not Roman graves) dating from about 43AD. One of the burial sites, subsequently referred to as “The Doctor’s Grave” contained various artefacts, including a set of diving rods, rings, a set of surgical instruments and a board game, set out as if a game was in progress, had also been placed in the doctor’s grave (other gaming pieces were found in the other enclosures, notably “The Warrior’s Grave”)

The game board is the oldest complete gaming board found in Britain. The rules are not known. What is known is that the game consists of a board (the excavated board had rotted, but enough remained, including fragments of wood, metal corner pieces and hinges, for a facsimile to be created) and a set of blue glass pieces and white glass pieces, set up on opposite sides of the board.
 
Woolley consults Irving Finkel, curator of games at the British Museum. Finkel suggests the game is a strategy game, probably a British game, dating from before the Roman invasion.

Woolley consults Mike Pitts, an archaeologist at Colchester Castle & Museum, to ask if there are any clues as to the identity of the owner of the game. Pitts notes that the game board may be deemed a highly significant object because the cremated remains of the grave’s occupant had been set out on the board, which was arranged as for a game, with the other objects on or around the board. Pitts suggests the occupant of the grave may have had divinatory powers and was “probably a Druid.” The game, therefore, suggests Woolley, may have been used for divination (ie prophecy).


Alea Evangelii [11:17]


Aethelstan, C10th King of Britain (and grandson of King Alfred) is mentioned in an illuminated manuscript as having a particular game in his court: alea evangelii (game of the evangelists). The manuscript, a copy of the gospels, also includes a diagram of the board game.

Woolley attempts to play the board game with mediaevalist David Howlett (note that they play with the pieces on the lines rather than in the spaces). Alea Evangelii is a member of the tafl group of games: it is an asymmetric game; there are twice as many attacking pieces as there are defending pieces. The object of the game for the defending side is for the king to “escape” to the edge or to the corner of the board, while the attacking side seeks to capture the king by flanking him between two pieces.

Alea Evangelii is a complex version of tablut. The board is an 18 x 18 grid and there are 72 pieces. In this version, the four corners represent the four evangelists, and there are various correspondences between the positions of the pieces on the board and biblical scripture.

Libros de los juegos [book of games] [18:40]

 Chess, draughts and backgammon began to be played by the end of C13th. They are recorded in a late thirteenth century manuscript, Libros de los joegos, compiled by the Spanish king, Alfonso X. Some of the games described in the book are eastern in origin.

A parable in the book tells of an Indian king and three wise men who are considering the nature of things and whether luck or wit is most important in shaping one’s life. The wise men refer to games in answering the king:

• The first wise man refers to games of chance: because everything in the universe is pre-ordained, we should put our trust in luck. This position might be understood as fatalism.
• The second wise man referred to games of skill, such as chess. Our fortune depends on our wit. This position refers to free will.
• The third said that the perfect game was a combination of luck and skill, because it was a representation of life itself. The example of this perfect combination is backgammon.

Woolley finds many games boards scratched into cloisters and even tombs in medieval cathedrals. One of the most popular games was Nine Men’s Morris.

Nine Men’s Morris [22:00]

Nine Men’s Morris is a form of noughts and crosses: the aim is to get three pieces in a row (which allows the player to remove an opponent’s piece).

Hazard [27:00]

Hazard may have been brought to Europe by returning crusaders in C14th. It is a gambling game, played with dice. It is telling that the name of this game is now the word used for danger of any kind.

• Calls 5
• Throws 6+4
• 10 is your chance
• 5 is your main

Throwing dice was frowned upon by the medieval church. The outcome of the dice determines the will of god – and the chance of winning a few coins is too trivial a matter to justify the invocation of god’s favour.


Faro [32:00]

A card game, popular amongst the aristocracy and upper classes in the C18th, saw many a ruin as fortunes were lost on the faro table.

An 1823 murder trial, involving James Thurtell (the son of the mayor of Norwich) who was convicted and hanged for killing a man over a gambling debt, led to The Gaming Act (1845). The case aroused a lot of interest in the press; hundreds of thousands of pamphlets were sold and several plays were put on, telling the story as a warning of the evils of gambling.

The Royal Game of Goose [38:00]

Popular Victorian board game based on theme of virtue. The game used a spinner rather than sinful dice. Board of 63 squares.

Snakes and Ladders [43:45]

Derived from, or inspired by, gyan chapoor, the Hindi game of knowledge. The Indian game sets out a quest, from nothingness to enlightenment. Similarly, the Indian game of Pachisi was simplified as ludo. Both Ludo and Snakes & Ladders were popular mass-produced games in C19th.

Chess [50:00]

Originated in India, ca. C8th

Howard Staunton, after whom the most familiar-shaped pieces are named, standardised the pieces and the rules for the first international chess tournament which was part of The Great Exhibition in 1851. Prior to this, chess had been played around the world for a thousand years with variations in both rules and pieces.

Veni, Vidi, Ludique

There is a very interesting set of exhibitions and events organised around the theme of play and games in antiquity at three museums in Switzerland: The Swiss Museum of Games; The Roman Museum in Nyon and The Roman Museum of Vallon.

Swiss Museum of Games, La Tour-de-Peilz

Currently, The Swiss Museum of Games has a special exhibition on the subject of antiquity in games, and a number of board games and computer games are on display, along with a selection of games for visitors to play with. The exhibition is open until 19th April, 2015, which will coincide with the end of the 18th Board Games Studies colloquium (the BGS colloquium dates are 15-18 April 2015)

Throw a six to start

The Games Museum also hosted a three-day international colloquium, entitled Jeux et Multiculturalite dans l'Antiquite Greco-Romain. I gave a presentation on Iron Age board game pieces on Tuesday morning [jeux et multiculturalite conference programme].

Jeux et Multiculturalite delegates at The Roman Museum, Nyon

The Roman Museum of Nyon has an extensive exhibition, entitled The Game of Life, which conference delegates visited on Wednesday. We were lucky enough to be given a guided tour of the exhibition (in English), by Veronique Dasen and Ulrich Schaedler, who are also the conference organisers and exhibition curators.
The Roman Museum of Vallon had a special ehibition, "Game Over", earlier in the year. "The Game of Life" exhibition will be moved to Vallon, with some alterations, in 2015.

Passing through the Netherworld

An interesting edition of the ancient Egyptian game senet was published by the Kirk Game Company in 1978.

What makes it interesting is that the set includes a booklet by Egyptologist Timothy Kendall, a frequently cited authority on senet who has also written a set of rules for the game.

The booklet doesn't appear to have been published seperately, so isn't available via inter-library loan. However, I found a few copies available via Amazon.com. Unfortunately, none of the dealers would send the game outside the United States. Undeterred, I asked an overseas chum if I could have the game sent to his address for forwarding.

Arrangements in place, I ordered the game for the bargain price of $14.50, and a few dollars for shipping -- in all, £12.50 (these games go for around $40.00 on Amazon, or £50 and up on Ebay).

From the back of the box:

Played from the earliest historical period (ca 3200 BC) well into Graeco-Roman times, senet was by far the most popular board game of pharonic Egypt. It was so important an aspect of daily life, in fact, that most Egyptians could not bear the thought of being without it, even in the world beyond the grave, and thus it very early became standard funerary equipmeent. By the mid-Nineteenth Dynasty (ca. 1250 BC) senet sets were such an outstanding feature of tomb regalia that the game itself was conceived as a complex funerary allegory and a simulation of one's imagined progression, after death, through the underworld. The encounters of a player with his opponent were seen as the encounters of his soul with the inimical forces of the nether regions and the satisfaction granted to the victor was his attainment of resurrection and eternal life. Now, re-created from a body of little-known evidence, this ancient game is presented here for the interest and amusement of all, whether games enthusiasts or Egyptologists, or both.

Researched, prepared and designed by Timothy Kendall
Department of Egyptian and Ancient Near East
Museum of Fine Art, Boston, Mass.

The game arrived promptly -- just two weeks from ordering to arrival on my doorstep -- carefully packaged by the original seller, and forwarded without delay by what turned out to be a friend of a friend, but I was a bit shocked too see that the postage on the box used for forwarding was $47.50 -- three times the cost of the game itself!

Nontheless, I'm looking forward to studying Kendall's booklet to find out a bit more about the background of senet.

There's a nice-looking mobile version of senet available (for both Android and iOS) with stylized graphics and evocative music which, as noted in this review, also uses Kendall's rules:

On the Radio

In this fourth (of five) episode of The Ideas That Make Us, Bettany Hughes explores the history of the word "Agony", which derives from the Greek "agon". It originally meant a meeting or gathering (to see the games) but came to mean "struggle" or "competition". The words "agony", "agonise", etc., are derived from "agon".

Listen here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03b2v70

The Ideas That Make Us. "Agony".
BBC Radio 4.
Tx. Monday 8th September 2014.
(First Broadcast: 19th September 2013).
Duration: 15 minutes.
Available online: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03b2v70


The Image

The image (above), from the cover of Elton Barker's Enter the Agon, shows Achilles and Ajax hunched over a game board, engrossed in a game of petteia ("pebbles"), known by the Romans as ludus latrunculorum or latrunculi.

The image comes from a C6th BC Greek amphora excavated from an Etruscan tomb, now in the Vatican's Etruscan museum.


The Game

David Parlett offers a brief account of the game in his history of board games (Parlett, pp. 234-238), along with the suggestion that the game board excavated from Stanway, near Colchester (aka "The Stanway Game" or "The Doctor's Game") is an example of latrunculi. Ulrich Schädler, on the other hand, suggests the Stanway game may be an example of a Celtic tafl-type game, such as fidhcheall or gwyddbwyll (Schadler, p. 373).



Parlett, D. (1999) The Oxford History of Board Games. Oxford. Oxford University Press.

Schädler, U. (2007) "The doctor’s game – new light on the history of ancient board games" in Crummy, P., et al.Stanway: An Elite Burial Site at Camulodunum. Britannia Monograph Series No. 24. London. Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies. pp. 359-375.

Brought to book

As part of a new approach to bibliography, and to introduce the new first year group of games design students to the library, during last week's session we descended en masse on the shelves and everybody in the group took out at least couple of books (some were seen carrying stacks of three or four books through the exit gate, and the alarm only went off a couple of times!)

It was a sight to behold and, as we left, the shelves seemed somewhat lighter (about a hundred books lighter, by my reckoning).

After raiding the library for books, the students were set the task of posting a short Harvard-style bibliography containing a couple of items to their blogs.

Later the same morning one of the games design tutors was overheard expressing surprise that the books he had gone to the library to borrow had already been taken out!

A couple of books and a couple of contributions to books

edit: and a couple of journal articles too!

I've compiled a short bibliography -- just four items -- to show the differences, in bibliographical terms, between a full-length book by one or more authors, and contributions to an edited collection, which is the book equivalent of a compilation album.

[update: I've edited the bibliography to add a couple of journal articles that I located using the Summon search tool. I had to edit the JSTOR citation to make the author's surname the first item (surname, then initials) insert the date of publication in brackets, add inverted commas to the title, and then remove the line breaks and strip out some unnecessary guff, but that only took a few seconds. The only other thing I had to do was to change the font face and size -- "Helvetica" and "Normal" in Blogger's terms -- to make the bibliography consistsent throughout.]

It should be obvious from the way each entry is laid out which is a full-length book and which is a contribution to a collection. 

The contributions, which aren't published under their own title, but are contained within a collection, have their titles in inverted commas. The titles of the collections, and the titles of full-length books, are italicised denoting the published title. 

Note too that edited collections have editors (abbreviated to "ed." for one or "eds" for more than one editor).

The author's surname is the first item, and forenames are shortened to initials. The whole list is sorted alphabetically according to the authors surname. 

It's quite a straightforward matter to organise a bibliography (and there are some tools to help, which we'll talk about in one of our Thursday meetings), but it does require some attention to detail, particularly if the reader is to be able to use the bibliography to retrieve any of the items listed in order to follow up a reference or to find out more about a particular topic.

I took real books off a bookcase and looked at them to find the information presented below, and then I sorted the list manually. However, with a longer bibliography, that might not be so easy. That's where bibliographical tools and reference management software come in handy, but more of that anon.

 Bibliography

Austin, R. G. (1934)  "Roman Board Games. I". Greece & Rome, Vol. 4, No. 10 (Oct., 1934), pp. 24-34. Available online: Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/641231 Date of access: 31 October 2014. 

Austin, R. G. (1935)  "Roman Board Games. II". Greece & Rome, Vol. 4, No. 11 (Feb., 1935), pp. 76-82. Available online: Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/640979 Date of access: 31 October 2014. 

LeBlanc, M. (2006) "Tools for Creating Dramatic Game Dynamics" in Salen, K. and Zimmerman, E. (eds) The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology. London. MIT Press. pp. 438-459.

Piccione, P. A. (2007) "The Egyptian Game of Senet and the Migration of the Soul" in Finkel, I. L. (ed.) Ancient Board Games in Perspective: Papers from the 1990 British Museum colloquium with additional contributions. London. British Museum Press. pp. 54-63.

Salen, K. and Zimmerman, E. (2004) Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. London. MIT Press.

Woods, S. (2012) Eurogames: The Design, Culture and Play of Modern European Board Games. London. McFarland.

Dancing with myself

What is the title of the book (fiction) you are currently reading or what is the title of the last fiction book you read?

I've just read Sugar Skull by Charles Burns. It is the final part of a graphic-novel trilogy in which a Tintin-like character wanders through a peculiar world (or maybe not, it might all be imagined) and/or has flashbacks, whilst engaged in an affair with a girl whose previous boyfriend is dangerous. There's a lot of symbolic imagery in the material, and I think to take it all in and really appreciate it, I should re-read all three volumes.  

What is the title/topic of the book (non-fiction) you are currently reading or what is the title/topic of the last non-fiction book you read?

I tend to usually have several different books on the go that I am dipping into at any one time. At the moment, I'm mainly dipping into Chris Totten's An Architectural Approach to Level Design and I also have an historical atlas of Celtic Europe that I'm looking at for research.

What is the last live performance (music, drama or dance) you attended?

The most recent live performance of music I attended was the WOMAD festival back in the summmer holidays. I was really looking forward to seeing Bobby Womack, who had been signed up as the headline act, but he died and was replaced by Sinead O'Connor! It's the sort of festival where you'll hear and see bands you might not have heard of before, and I like to relax with a bottle of wine, a backgammon board and a newspaper in the shade of the arboretum without worrying too much about who's playing or what type of music is on. Having said that though, the Radio 3 stage has moved to a new location, right in the middle of the arenam, where there is no shade at all!

What is the title of the last film you saw at the cinema / online or watched on DVD?

I've recently been watching some of the old Dogme 95 films, and saw Thomas Vinterberg's Festen and Lars von Trier's The Idiots in the same week (crediting the director is actually one of the things the Dogme 95 manifesto rails against, btw). They both have dark aspects, and I thought both were interesting and enjoyable despite -- perhaps even because of -- the grim parts. The last film I saw at the cinema was a 3D-screening of Guardians of the Galaxy at the Barbican, which is one of my favourite cinemas.

Guardians doesn't have a manifesto like Dogme 95, but it was quite good fun. Von Trier, on the other hand, doesn't offer the same kind of filmic fun, but I may have to splurge out on a box-set or two soon. 

How often do you read a newspaper? (Which one(s)? Online or physcial?)

I read The Guardian online everyday, and get a paper copy of The Guardian or The Observer at the weekend, and it often takes me the best part of the week to get through it.

Which art gallery / museum / exhibition did you last visit?

I recently went to Ipswich museum to look at their senet pieces. Before that, I visited the Ancient Lives exhibition at the British Museum. The exhibition consists of eight mummies, from different times and places, that have been scanned using computer tomography (CT scanning). It means the mummies can be explored inside, like a virtual unwrapping, without any damage. The interactive displays are probably at the cutting edge of what is being done in museums with computers. Some of the artefacts that had been hidden under the bandages, such as amulets, unseen for thousands of years (the last people to have seen them would have been those involved in the mummification process-- had been created using a 3D printer and put on display with some of the other artefacts. The exhibition runs until November 2014.

http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/online_tours/egypt/mummy_the_inside_story/mummy_the_inside_story.aspx 

 
How many hours a week do you spend playing video games?

Very few. Maybe two to four hours in an FPS in a heavy gaming week, less (like none, zero, zilch, nada) when I'm busy and there's stuff to get done. Otherwise I might just tap at a phone version of an ancient board game for a few minutes at a time. Having said that, I did spend a couple of hours playing the indie game Slender: The Eight Pages recently (it's a first person horror game) after I'd read about it. Download it here: http://www.techradar.com/downloads/slender-the-eight-pages

How many hours a week do you spend playing games other than video games?

Depending on the time of year, I might spend several hours at a time playing backgammon (I play more in the summer). At other times, especially in the autumn and winter months, I might spend a few hours at a time in a session of a some kind of "eurogame", probably something like Dominion, Carcasonne, Ticket to Ride or Settlers of Catan, or maybe Cards Against Humanity