# Talk:Royal Game of Ur

The graphic that shows the way the pieces would most likely have moved is wrong, the final two squares need to be reversed (so that the final square is the rosette square)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.71.218.238 (talk) 14:57, 10 March 2021 (UTC) 

The name has a misprint. Where is
Lhéte Jean Marie, Histoire des jeux de société, 1994 Flammarion
should be
Jean-Marie Lhôte, Histoire des jeux de société, 1994 Flammarion

Found this on the British Museum website, thought it might be of interest. -Cass0

When I visited the British museum around 1980, I was told that there were two others sets besides the one on display there. TeunSpaans 15:21, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

TIME recently featured a story that relates to this game. It could be used as a source to significantly improve the article.   — C M B J   09:17, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

If the game is still played today, how can no one know for sure its rules? Or even what kind of game it is ("It is universally agreed that [it] is a race game.")? I mean, that makes no sense:
"Yo, lets play a game?"
"Sure, what kind of game?"
"I HAVE NO CLUE! I brought the board and the pieces."
The citation that claims it is still played today is for a news article that seems dubious at best. Like a clumsy newswriter said that just to color his writing without checking his facts.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.5.140.238 (talk) 20:28, 30 June 2010 (UTC) 

There are rules for the game (as cited in the article) which are found on stone tablets, and though these are partial they are enough to piece together the main crux of the game.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arian471 (talk • contribs) 09:00, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
We know the basic rules of the game, but there are some elements of it that are in dispute. For example, no one seems to agree on what the rosettes mean, but they are found on every surviving copy of the gameboard. --Katolophyromai (talk) 18:01, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

According to the wiki article on the ancient Egyptian game of senet,  examples of this game have been found which pre-date the royal game of ur by some thousand years. If the references are accurate, then the claim on this article to be the oldest is in error.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.69.48.10 (talk) 15:36, 23 May 2011 (UTC) 

It may be the oldest we still know how to play (ish) but another issue in the same vain is that the Backgammon page claims to be older, and though its sources seem un-corroborated it does mean that at least one of the two pages is wrong.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arian471 (talk • contribs) 09:02, 17 May 2017 (UTC) 

The claim that Backgammon is the oldest board game is a popular myth that is probably based on the fact that many sources fail to distinguish between Backgammon and other games of the tables family. I've recently corrected that. Bermicourt (talk) 12:29, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

For the record, there has been some changes back and forth between BC and BCE. The most recent edits had the following summaries:

2017-06-17T07:57:06? Sion8 (BC->BCE; no edit summary)
2017-06-17T12:16:30? 172.58.201.202 rv change to date format which violates policy as the extra e is overwhelmingly disliked by most users
2017-06-17T21:55:31? Sion8 Undid revision 786112484 by 172.58.201.202
2017-06-18T00:32:05? 172.58.201.55 Please educate yourself about our Wikipedia policies. You're not allowed to switch date format to the unfavored one, it will be reverted, and you're not allowed to silently edit war to do this
2017-06-18T23:38:58? Nø Undid revision 786198712 by 172.58.201.55 (talk) rv edit by IP user with wildly misleading edit summary
2017-06-19T01:38:24? 208.54.87.180 wrong, clear violation of MOSDATE, You're not allowed to arbitrarily switch date format plain & simple, but most importantly what you somehow failed to realize is, "This WILL be reverted"
Number 5 was mine, based on the facts that while the policy implied in each case by MOSDATE depends on the history of the article, the statemens in the edit summaries about the date format BCE violating policy, being overwhelmingly disliked, and being unfavoured, are clearly wrong and have no support in MOSDATE.
I also inspected the article history and found that e.g. around the beginning of 2010 the article had BCE, not BC.
However, upon further inspection, I find that over time, the BC format has been used quite a lot more than BCE in this article, and hence I agree that by MOSDATE it must be BC here.
I personally find this weird considering the intercultural nature of wikipedia and the non-Christian content of this article, but I am perfectly aware of the policy here, and always try to follow it (though with regrets in cases like this).--Nø (talk) 15:19, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

So you took all that time just to type that out explaining why you were wrong according to policy and I was right? Amazing. The bottom line is the extra e serves no functional purpose but to flag the pov of the author which is why it is so unpopularand will not be changed. There is no need to go on at length about this as I may not have time to respond to this petty pov flagging type winging. 172.58.185.100 (talk) 20:35, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
The bottom line is, assuming you are the same anonymous user, you made several reverts misrepresenting Wikipedia policy in your edit summaries. As I, having wasted time investigating the case further because of those erroneous edit summaries, had no edit to do to the article itself, I could not correct that in an edit summary, I felt I had to waste further time in order to clarify the situation here. As for the substance of the matter - BC or BCE - we obviously don't and won't agree; however this is not the place to discuss that.--Nø (talk) 06:23, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Are the "Basic rules" quoted in the article Finkel's interpretation, described in the previous section of the article? Is it worth mentioning any alternate theories alongside this, even if they were contradicted by the translated tablets? (R C Bell's Board and Table Games quotes Woolley's The First Phases and mentions a found board having only "six curious dice", offering suggested rules which play out differently, and which involve throwing three dice each, rather than four. Although it's unclear whether those rules are Bell's own.) --Lord Belbury (talk) 16:42, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

@Lord Belbury: The rules in the "Basic rules" section are Finkel's. I am not currently aware of any major competing interpretations and his seem to be widely accepted. You may notice that Bell's book was first published in 1960 and republished in 1979, both of which are before Finkel translated the rules tablet by Itti-Marduk-balālu in the early 1980s. Therefore, while Bell's description of the game board itself, the pieces that accompany it, and the circumstances of the game's discovery are still highly relevant, I would consider his reconstruction of the rules to be outdated, since it predates the translation of the tablet. The number of pieces and dice, however, do seem to vary depending on the time period, so it may be worth mentioning variations in the numbers, if I can find more information about this. --Katolophyromai (talk) 17:35, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:Royal Game of Ur/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Hrodvarsson (talk · contribs) 22:20, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
I will review this soon. Hrodvarsson (talk) 22:20, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
A few comments:

"emigrating back to Israel". Did the Jews in Kochi (Cochin Jews may be a relevant link to add to the article) originally emigrate from the state of Israel? Or from the biblical land of Israel? If it is the latter, back should not be used.
"The number of marked ends facing upwards after a roll of the die indicates how many spaces a player may move during that turn". Die should be dice here.
On the topic of the dice, four-sided die may be a useful link to add to the article.
Regarding the Green 2008 reference, "TIME Magazine" is just Time and should be listed as a magazine rather than a publisher.
Hrodvarsson (talk) 22:10, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

@Hrodvarsson: I believe all the above concerns have now been addressed. --Katolophyromai (talk) 23:32, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
@Katolophyromai: Okay, I don't think there are any other problems. I believe the article meets the GA criteria. Nice job! Hrodvarsson (talk) 23:53, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

@Ihardlythinkso: The reason I reverted your edit yesterday where you removed the "refbegins" and "refends" was mainly out of desire for consistency with the other articles I have written. Those parameters are helpful in articles with large reference sections because they make the references smaller than the body text of the article to save space, but, I have not restored them since you removed them again because, in an article with this short of a bibliography, they are not really needed, which makes this really just a style dispute.
The same thing is true about having the "Bibliography" section listed in the Table of Contents, which is beneficial in an article with a large number of inline citations because it makes it easier to jump straight to the "Bibliography" section if one wishes, but, since this article is so short, it probably is not necessary here. --Katolophyromai (talk) 13:22, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Thx for explain. Have restored to your prev preference. I see it's a popular way now in some FAs. Cheers. --IHTS (talk) 13:42, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Hi. I noticed to that hopscotch (hinkelen in dutch) seems to use the same drawing board.. i link a dutch wiki with an english picture
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkelen#/media/File:Hopscotch_in_driveway.jpg  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.149.83.125 (talk) 18:08, 5 July 2018 (UTC) 

If it was played until the fifties, aren't there descriptions of the rules from surviving players which could have been used as evidence in addition to the ancient tablets? But to what extent do these descriptions and the evidence from the tablets agree? --82.137.115.143 (talk) 21:24, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure what makes this article qualify as "vital" for everyday life. One can live their entire life without knowing about the game, without playing it. I don't mean to demean the game itself or its value, but it seems strange to consider it a vital article. I'd expect something like Go to be listed, and it is. Yet that article is listed as vital in "life", not "everyday life". The inconsistency rankles, if nothing else. Cnehren (talk) 16:48, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

I think the logic is this. Games are part of everyday life. Within the category of games this has been rated a 'vital' article because of the significance of the game to the history and development of board games. It does not mean the game is 'vital' to our lives. That's not how the categorisation works. Bermicourt (talk) 13:06, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

The article at some point refers to the image of the two paths being displayed "on the right", but for example as mobile user the image was at the top of the subsection Ruse.mp (talk) 09:51, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

Royal Game of Ur 03.jpg
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 14:22, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

I had the thought while ago that maybe the Royal Game of Ur supposed to emulate broze age chariot warfare tactics. I remember reading about how the sea peoples were effective against bronze age civilizations at the time because portions of the lines of infantry would sporatically surge forward taking chariots by surprise as they ran between the two armies. I didn't know where else to post this idea but I guess let me know. MagosEdge (talk) 00:48, 22 October 2023 (UTC)