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Games Ancient and Oriental: The Egyptian Games
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Free material for Falkener's Egyptian games: three boards at playing size to print, the register that separates the evidence from the reconstruction, the terms, and the three timelines this volume keeps apart.
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Three boards to print and play on
PDF · US Letter · 3 pages
The board of thirty compartments, Senat at five squares each way, and the concentric rings of Hab em Han — at playing size, on US Letter. Each carries the same mark it carries in the book: EVIDENCE where an ancient source describes the board, RECONSTRUCTION where Falkener inferred it. Counters or coins will do for men.
Open PDF513 KBThe Register of Reconstructions
PDF · US Letter · 1 page
For each of the three games: what the evidence shows, what Falkener supplies, and what is known now — which in every case includes that the rules are still not known. The instrument the book is built around, on one sheet.
Open PDF69 KBThe terms
PDF · US Letter · 2 pages
The games, dynasties and seventeenth-century antiquaries Falkener assumes you already know — sent, senet, mehen, latrunculi, Seega, Hyde, Birch — with what each one is and, where it differs, what it is called now.
Open PDF68 KBThree timelines
PDF · US Letter · 1 page
The Egyptian, which is deep and imprecise; the classical, which is shallow and better dated; and the antiquarian, which runs from Salmasius in 1620 to Falkener in 1892. Keeping them apart is most of what makes the book readable.
Open PDF68 KB
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About this material
Edward Falkener died in 1896 and Dr Samuel Birch, whose 1864 paper the book prints, died in 1885, so their text is in the public domain everywhere (source: Internet Archive, gamesancientorie00falkuoft). None of the 1892 illustrations is reproduced. The line figures are unsigned and no draughtsman is named for them; the colophon credits the photographic plates to Owen Williams, photographer, of Laugharne, whose dates are not recoverable. Every board on these sheets was drawn for this edition from the descriptions in the text.