2-580-413 - © CM Dixon/Heritage Images

The Royal Game of Ur, from Ur, southern Iraq, c2600-c2400 BC. This game board is one of several with a similar layout found by Leonard Woolley in the Royal Cemetery at Ur. The board has twenty squares made of shell and was made for two players. Examples of this 'Game of Twenty Squares' date from about 3000 BC to the first millennium AD and are found widely from the eastern Mediterranean and Egypt to India. A version of the Mesopotamian game survived within the Jewish community at Cochin, South India until modern times. From the British Museum's collection.