Royal Game of Ur The Royal Game of Ur refers to two game boards found in Royal Tombs of Ur by Sir Leonard Woolley in the 1920s . The two boards date from the First Dynasty of Ur , before 2600 BC , thus making the Royal Game of Ur probably the oldest set of board gaming equipment ever found . One of the two boards is exhibited in the collections of the British Museum in London . A board game known with some certainty to be older than The Royal Game of Ur is the ancient Egyptian game Senet , the existence of which possibly dates as early as the 33rd century BC . Also , recent excavations of a sixty piece set in the `` Burnt City '' located in Iran has shown that a very similar board game existed five thousand years ago , slightly edging out the age of the Ur set . The Royal Game of Ur was played with two sets ( one black and one white ) of seven markers and three pyramidal dice . The rules of the game as it was played in Mesopotamia are not known but there is a reliable reconstruction of gameplay based on a cuneiform tablet of Babylonian origin dating from 177 - 176 BC . It is universally agreed that the Royal Game of Ur , like Senet , is a race game . Both games may be predecessors to the present-day backgammon . References Jean-Marie Lhôte , Histoire des jeux de société , 1994 Flammarion Jack Botermans , Tony Burrett , Peter Van Delft , Carla Van Splunteren , Le monde des Jeux , 1987 Cté Nlle des Editions du Chêne Finkel Irving , La tablette des régles du jeu royal d'Ur , Jouer dans l'Antiquité , cat. exp. , Marseille , musée d'Archéologie méditerranéenne , 1991 . `` Iran 's Burnt City Throws up World’s Oldest Backgammon. '' Persian Journal. 4 Dec. 2004. 22 Apr. 2006 < http : //www.iranian.ws/cgi-bin/iran_news/exec/view.cgi/2/4743 > . External links The Royal Game of Ur , including history and suggested gameplay Royal Game of Ur pages , Rules history and links The Royal Game of Ur , a playable version at the British Museum. ( Requires Flash . ) Tables games series   v · d · e   Historic : Royal Game of Ur · Ludus duodecim scriptorum · Tabula Modern : Acey-deucey · Gul bara · Plakoto · Sugoroku · Tapa Backgammon : Glossary · Notation · Opening · Chouette · FIBS · Hypergammon Categories : Backgammon · Tables · Players  This board game -related article or section is a stub . You can help Wikipedia by expanding it . Categories : Board game stubs | Tables games 