page_title: List of Egyptian inventions and discoveries
section_title: Sports
hierarchical_section_title: List of Egyptian inventions and discoveries / Ancient Egypt / Sports
caption_attribution_description: English: Ebony label depicting the pharaoh Den, found in his tomb in Abydos, circa 3000 BC. Top register depicts the king running in his Heb Sed festival as well as seated on a throne. Lower register depicts the destruction of enemy strongholds and the taking of captives. EA 32650.
context_page_description: Egyptian inventions and discoveries are objects, processes or techniques which owe their existence either partially or entirely to an Egyptian person. Often, things which are discovered for the first time, are also called "inventions", and in many cases, there is no clear line between the two. Below is a list of such inventions.
context_section_description: Bowling – The earliest known forms of bowling date back to ancient Egypt, with wall drawings depicting bowling being found in a royal Egyptian tomb dated to 5200 B.C. and miniature pins and balls in an Egyptian child's grave about 5200 B.C. Remnants of bowling balls were found among artifacts in ancient Egypt going back to the Egyptian protodynastic period in 3200 BC. What is thought to be a child's game involving porphyry (stone) balls, a miniature trilithon, and nine breccia-veined alabaster vase-shaped figures—thought to resemble the more modern game of skittles—was found in Naqada, Egypt in 1895.
  Hockey – Drawings on tombs at Beni Hassan in Menia Governorate show players holding bats made of long palm-tree branches, with a bent end similar to that of the hockey bat. The hockey ball was made of compressed papyrus fibers covered with two pieces of leather in the shape of a semicircle.
  Handball – Drawings of this sport are found on the Saqqara tombs, five thousand years old. The ball was made of leather and stuffed with plant fibers or hay, or made of papyrus plants in order to be light and more durable. It was seldom used for more than one match.
  Gymnastics – Ancient Egyptians were the first to play Gymnastics. They even developed three types of Gymnastics which are: Rhythmic Gymnastics, Gymnastics: Consecutive Vault and floor gymnastics.
  Boxing – The earliest evidence of boxing dates back to Egypt around 3000 BC.
  Weightlifting – Weightlifting was first recorded in ancient Egypt. One method of weightlifting was lifting a heavy sack of sand with one hand and keep it high in a vertical position. The player had to hold that sack of sand for some time and stay in the same position. This rule is still applied in the modern weightlifting.
  High jump
  Tug of War – This sport was practiced in the country side.
  Tug of Hoop
  Equilibrium (sport)
  Running – Although running was very common in prehistoric times, running races began in Ancient Egypt during the Heb-sed festival as early as 3000 BC.
  Fencing – The first historical evidence from archaeology of a fencing contest was found on the wall of a temple within Egypt built at a time dated to approximately 1190 B.C.
  Tahtib – The oldest traces of tahtib were found on engravings from the archaeological site of Abusir, an extensive necropolis of the Old Kingdom period, located in the south-western suburbs of Cairo. On some of the reliefs of the Pyramid of Sahure (V dynasty, c. 2500 BC); the images and explanatory captions are particularly precise and accurate in their depiction of what seems to be military training using sticks. Tahtib, with archery and wrestling, was then among the three disciplines of warfare taught to soldiers.
caption: Detail from an ebony label of the First Dynasty pharaoh Den, depicting him running around the ritual boundary markers as part of the Sed festival
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