TABLETOP TIME MACHINE
Also known as Hounds and Jackals, from the shape of the pegs; the Shield game, from the shape of the board; or the Palm Tree game, from one particularly striking design, Fifty-Eight Holes arose in Egypt around 2000BCE, spread over the Middle East and remained popular for over 1000 years, together with related race games like the Royal Game of Ur and Senet. Over 70 surviving boards, occurring in three styles distinguished by shape as axe-head, violin, and oval dish, incarnate a race game for two, each following their own track of 29 holes meeting together at the 58th, the goal.
A splendid example from Thebes, discovered by Lord Carnarvon in 1932, shows a board as the upper surface of a free-standing table with five carved pegs representing hounds and five representing jackals and decorated with the said palm tree design. It’s unclear whether five each was the standard number, whether all were used in the game, or indeed what the rules of play were. The fact that it lasted so long and in competition with the Ur-game and Senet suggests that there must have been more to it than just each player following their own path in parallel with but completely independently of the other. There had certainly been a high degree of interaction in later forms of the Ur game. Support for its (eventual) presence in Fifty-Eight Holes is suggested by the design of later boards, which feature lines connecting holes a certain distance apart, thus adding drama by causing each player to jump forwards or backwards, as well as cross-over loops connecting the two tracks.
Irving Finkel has recently tabulated the connections, with tactical comments on each. For example, the forward leap from 5 to 25 is described as ‘a desperate escape leap that is only concerned with reaching the goal, probably attractive after repeated earlier knocking off’, while the leap from hole #1 on your side to that on your opponent’s side is (perhaps not surprisingly) ‘deeply offensive’. It isn’t clear, however, what exactly you do when jumping over to your opponent’s track. It would be nonsensical to then follow the other track to home at the 58th hole, so at some point you will have to revert to your own.
Possibly you just stay put and hinder your opponent from making further progress till you move away – that’s assuming they’re not allowed to land on or go past you so long as you remain there.
Finkel advances a sociological theory as to the origin of the game, suggesting it arose in the harem ‘… from a menstrual progress reckoning device deployed by royal wives and companions in the ancient palace equivalents of the later harem or zenana. Counting the days of the month for women who were lying around waiting at the disposal of the king … would be crucial. […] It is easy to imagine that girls in the same boat might enjoy a semi-competitive rivalry with regard to progress through their measured days, and it is but a step from that to a harem game with dice to hand and a few more pegs. Thus might a customised and elegant personal device invented for a quite different solo purpose evolve into a pleasurable, drowsy but private game for two’.
ABOVE An example from Thebes
SOURCES
I. L. Finkel, ‘New light on an old game’, in The Reade Festschrift, Archaeo Press 2020, pp 43-51
For suggested rules see: ttgami.ng/dogsandjack