Ancient Egyptians at Play by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781474221191
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2015-11-01T16:00:00+00:00

5

The Game of Hounds and Jackals: From Thebes to Susa

Figure 5.1 Distribution of the game of hounds and jackals in Egypt and the Near East during the second and first millennia BCE.

The archaeological evidence for the game of hounds and jackals points to its origin in Egypt at the turn of the second millennium BCE. The oldest material for this game was found in the necropolis of the capital Thebes and at provincial sites in the region of the Fayum (Sedment, Lahun and Lisht). Hounds and jackals is almost exclusively attested during the Middle Kingdom within Egypt, and later boards are dated stylistically but lack solid archaeological provenance. Military campaigns and trade relations facilitated the game’s spread to Nubia and to central Anatolia as early as the beginning of the second millennium BCE. The game was popular throughout the Near East, including the Iranian plateau, until the mid-first millennium BCE (fig. 5.1). There are about seventy known examples of boards. Seven are from Egypt, three from Nubia, eight from Anatolia, thirty from Mesopotamia, eight from Iran, ten from the Levant and two from Syria (de Voogt et al. 2013:1718–19, fig. 3, table 2).

The ancient name of the game is not known but many modern descriptive names have proliferated such as hounds contra jackals or palm tree game—after a unique set from Thebes—, pegs and holes and shield game (Parlett 1999:68–9). Other designations derive from the track of peg holes that characterizes the game. Petrie (1927:55) was the first to use the term game of fifty-eight holes, which refers to the two parallel rows of twenty-nine holes. The field is completed at the end by a thirtieth hole, larger or at least specially marked. This led to the appellation game of thirty points (Drioton 1940:186).

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.