✦ c. 2600 BCE · Ur ✦

Royal Game of Ur

✦ c. 2600 BCE · Mesopotamia ✦

Royal Game
of Ur

The world's oldest playable board game — buried with the queens of Ur, decoded from a Babylonian tablet, alive on your screen. Race your seven pieces home; rosettes grant another throw; the shared lane is a battlefield.

Solid positional judgement: safety, rosettes, and races. No lookahead.

Play the Royal Game of Ur online

The Royal Game of Ur is a two-player race game from ancient Mesopotamia, first played around 2600 BCE and among the oldest board games whose rules can still be reconstructed. This is a free, ad-free version you can play in any browser, using the rules Irving Finkel of the British Museum reconstructed from a Babylonian clay tablet.

Ways to play

The rules in one minute

Each player races seven pieces along a 14-square route and off the board. Throw four pyramid dice to get a move of 0 to 4. Land on a rosette for another throw; the central rosette is also safe. Land on an opponent in the shared middle lane to send that piece back to the start. Bearing off needs an exact throw. First to bring all seven home wins. The full guide is in how to play the Royal Game of Ur, and the odds behind good play are in the strategy guide.

A game buried with royalty

Sir Leonard Woolley found the finest boards in the Royal Cemetery at Ur, in what is now southern Iraq, in the 1920s; one is on display in the British Museum. Versions of the game spread across the ancient Near East and were played for thousands of years. Read the full history of the Royal Game of Ur, or print a board to play at the table.