Aseb is a board game for two players also called by archaeologists “Game of 20 squares” in reference to a similar game of Middle Eastern origin. In reality, Aseb derives directly from the oldest game in the world, the Sumerian Royal Table of Ur, so much so that in its most archaic forms it featured ...
Aseb is a board game for two players also called by archaeologists “Game of 20 squares” in reference to a similar game of Middle Eastern origin. In reality, Aseb derives directly from the oldest game in the world, the Sumerian Royal Table of Ur, so much so that in its most archaic forms it featured the same type of flower decoration as the Table of Ur.
Aseb, like the Royal Table of Ur and the Senet, is a game of path, but it is much shorter, faster and simpler.
Arrived in Egypt during the 18th dynasty, it then depopulated especially among Egyptian nobles, so much so that it was later associated with the Senet, depicting the board on the back of the latter game.
The reconstruction of the game rules was particularly complicated, as the original rules are unknown. To reconstruct them we relied on the studies of Irving Finkel, an Assyrological scholar and philologist currently Assistant Guardian of Writing, Languages and Cultures of Ancient Mesopotamia at the British Museum’s Department of the Middle East, who translated a cuneiform tablet describing the philosophy, structure of the game and, in a rather convoluted way according to his statements, the rules of the Royal Table of Ur as it was played in later times, that is, both by the Babylonians.
