Today, Fifth Graders in Ancient History learned to play what is perhaps the oldest board game known to us, the Royal Game of Ur. A few years back, I was able to see one of these board games in the Mesopotamian collection at the British Museum, and which dates back to roughly 2,000 B.C.E. Although the rules of the game are not wholly definite, the game seems to be basically a race to get a player’s 7 pieces through the game board. We played on boards that I made out of posterboard, and we threw rocks that had been marked with a dots (similar to dice). It’s true…some games are simply timeless!
