The Royal Game of Ur is a 4500-year-old race game from ancient Mesopotamia, recovered intact from the royal tombs at Ur (modern Iraq) by Leonard Woolley in the 1920s. Rules were translated from a 177 BCE Babylonian clay tablet by Irving Finkel of the British Museum in 1981 — the longest unbroken span of any known board game whose rules survive.
Two players, 7 pieces each. Cast 4 binary throwsticks (or roll 4 coins) — count "1"s for your move. Race pieces along an asymmetric 20-square track from entry to exit. Land on rosette squares for safety and an extra turn; land on a single enemy piece (off rosette) to send it back to start. First to bear off all 7 pieces wins.
Irving Finkel of the British Museum translated a Babylonian rules tablet (BM 33333) in 1981. Earlier scholars had reconstructed the board from tomb finds but didn't have the rules until Finkel's translation.
Same family but the Ur track is asymmetric (some squares only one player can enter), and rosette squares grant safety AND extra turns. Ur predates Backgammon by ~2500 years.
Four bicolored sticks with one black and one white face. Count the white faces showing — 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 — as your move. Yields a non-uniform distribution centered on 2 (most likely).
20–30 minutes. Quicker than Backgammon, longer than Mancala.
The Royal Game of Ur is one of the oldest board games in the world — playable boards were buried in the Royal Tombs of Ur (modern Iraq) around 2600 BCE, and the rules survive on a Babylonian clay tablet translated by the British Museum’s Irving Finkel. It is a two-player race game: get all seven of your pieces around the track and off the board before your opponent. Fast to learn, genuinely tense to play.
The board has 20 squares in an unmistakable shape: two 3×4 blocks joined by a 1×2 bridge. Each player runs their own private column at the start and end, and both share the central lane in the middle:
You roll four four-sided (tetrahedral) dice, each with two marked corners. Count the marked corners that land up: your move is 0–4. Because it is the sum of four coin-flips, the distribution is binomial — 2 is the most common roll (about 3 in 8), while 0 and 4 are rare (1 in 16 each). Roll a 0 and you forfeit the turn. Good players plan around expecting a 2.
Five squares carry a rosette symbol, and they do two things that decide games:
The rosette in the center of the shared lane is the single most valuable square on the board: it is safe, it grants a bonus roll, and — in this build — a piece parked there blocks the opponent from passing through the choke point.
In the shared middle lane, landing exactly on a square occupied by a single opposing piece sends that piece all the way back to start. You cannot capture on a rosette (it is safe), and you cannot land on your own piece. A well-timed capture in the middle lane can swing an entire game — a piece knocked back near the finish loses a dozen squares of progress.
To remove a piece you need an exact roll to move it off the final square — overshooting is not allowed, so a piece one square from home needs a 1. First player to bear off all seven pieces wins.