Some Misconceptions About Ancient Roman Games

Henry Parker is at the origin of some false ideas as to the age and history of certain board games, especially of Mancala and Merels. Having spent 30 years in what today is called Sri Lanka, where he had worked for the Irrigation Department from 1873 to 1904, he published his “Ancient Ceylon” in 1909. It is in this book that he talks at some length about the designs engraved into the stone blocks that cover the roof of the temple of Sethos I in el-Qurna near Thebes (Upper Egypt), erected in the 14th century B.C.1 We do not know, when exactly Parker visited the site. Until today, Parker remains the only one to document and publish these patterns, which are of different nature: some are geometric patterns, others are outlines of feet and hands, still others are crosses of different type and shape, and finally there are more complex symbolic compositions. Some of the patterns resemble game boards for Mancala (p. 589), Nine men’s morris, Three men’s morris or Alquerque. Parker thought that all those designs were cut at the same time by the workmen in charge of the construction of the temple, i.e. 1370-60 BCE (p. 646, 578). He based this assumption on his observation of three drawings that were partially cut away when the stones were finally trimmed to their definite shape: a pentagram with a sign in the centre, a circle crossed by three intersecting lines (like a Chi-Rho christogram) and another circle with three or maybe four intersecting lines.2 It must be said