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The Royal Game of Ur Handcrafted Leather Board
Ur Board
Wooden Pieces
Glass Pieces
Leather Mat

Showing our 20-square rosette layout on genuine leather with 14 counters and four binary wooden dice.

★★★★☆ Historically Reconstructed Ancient Mesopotamia (c. 2600 BC)

The Royal Game of Ur

The 4,600-Year-Old Race of Kings & Sacred Rosettes

Buried in the Royal Cemetery of Sumer and deciphered from Babylonian cuneiform tablets by Dr. Irving Finkel at the British Museum. A thrilling contest of tactical risk along a contested central raceway.

R600.00 Includes 4 Binary Wooden Dice
Leather Colour: Off White
Drawstring Colour: Black
Playing Pieces: Glass
Includes four two-tone binary wooden dice and 14 handcrafted pieces.
Delivery via Pudo, Paxi, or Aramex (Free delivery on orders over R900).
Complete Irving Finkel British Museum rules and rosette movement guide.

The Story of The Royal Game of Ur

Around 4,600 years ago, people in ancient Mesopotamia were playing a game that would eventually disappear from living memory.

Beautiful game boards were buried in the Royal Cemetery at Ur, in what is now Iraq. One surviving example in the British Museum dates to approximately 2600–2400 BC.

For thousands of years, the game remained a mystery. Then British Museum curator Dr. Irving Finkel deciphered a Babylonian cuneiform tablet containing information about how the game was played. This allowed the Royal Game of Ur to be reconstructed and played again in the modern world.

Objective

Move all seven of your pieces along the course and safely off the board before your opponent.

How to Play

  1. Pieces: Each player has seven pieces in their reserve off the board.
  2. Binary Dice Throw: Players take turns throwing the four binary wooden dice.
  3. Calculating Movement: Count the number of white faces showing. This gives a movement of 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4 spaces. If all four dice show black (0 white), the move is 0 and the turn passes.
  4. Board Entry & Course: Pieces enter the board along the player's personal side, turn down the central contested track, and loop back out.
  5. Contested Central Track: The two players share the central section of the course.
  6. Capturing: If you land on an opponent's piece on a capturable square, that piece is removed from the board and must begin its journey from the start.
  7. Rosette Sanctuaries: Pieces resting on a rosette square are completely safe and cannot be captured.
  8. Extra Turns on Rosettes: Landing on a rosette grants the player an immediate extra throw!
  9. Bearing Off: A piece reaching the end of its route may leave the board when the exact required throw is obtained.
  10. Victory: The first player to successfully bring all seven pieces home wins.

How Accurate Are These Rules?

This is one of the most interesting aspects of Ur.

We have considerably more evidence than we do for Senet, thanks to the deciphered Babylonian cuneiform text. However, modern versions do not all agree on every detail. For example, different reconstructions have used five or seven pieces, and there are differences concerning the precise route and the treatment of certain rosettes.

Our version uses the seven-piece, four-dice style popularised by modern reconstructions associated with Dr. Irving Finkel.

When you play the Royal Game of Ur, you are participating in one of the rare board games for which archaeologists have been able to reconnect an ancient game board with written evidence about how it was played.

Our Modern Binary Dice

The ancient game used specialised throwing dice/lots, including tetrahedral dice in reconstructed versions.

For The Heritage Game Company edition, we use four wooden binary dice, each with three white sides and three black sides.

This is not historically accurate in physical form. However, the binary principle is deliberately retained: each die produces one of two outcomes, and the total determines the number of spaces a player may move.

This gives the game a practical modern form while retaining the spirit of its ancient method of chance.

Game Specifications

Players 2 Players
Board 20-square shaped layout with rosettes on genuine leather leather mat
Pieces 7 per player (14 pieces total)
Dice Four binary wooden dice (three white / three black faces)
Playing Time Approximately 20–30 minutes
Difficulty Easy to learn / Moderate to master
Historical Confidence ★★★★☆ — based on ancient British Museum Babylonian cuneiform tablet