Ancient Gambling

Gambling has long been one of the human race’s favorite pastimes. Although highly regulated and sometimes even prohibited in ancient societies, people continued to gamble enthusiastically.

Egyptian tomb art began featuring senet approximately 5000 years ago, evolving from being just another game into having deep spiritual connotations.

Roman Dice Games

Ancient Romans used dice for moving game pieces around and gambling purposes, commonly referred to as “tesserae.” Aside from their odd-shaped appearance, these ancient dice acted similarly to modern dice: any two adjacent sides added up to seven.

However, unlike modern gamblers, Romans didn’t pay too much attention to odds when gambling. Instead they believed fate and gods controlled each roll and if one landed on their desired number then that was just their luck!

Researchers Jelmer Eerkens from University of California Davis and Alex de Voogt from Drew University Madison New Jersey studied Roman-era dice to better understand its role in ancient Rome, using 23 psychology majors as test subjects. Their team found that their asymmetric shapes left little room for chance; some even boasting over twice as many pip faces than other dice!

Greek Dice Games

Ancient Greece saw widespread participation in dice games. Dice games were considered intellectually stimulating pastimes that often held symbolic meaning to various gods; yet in many instances gambling became so pervasive it led to laws being created to reduce its incidence.

Petteia was an immensely popular Greek dice game that is frequently mentioned in literary and pictorial sources. Players would use strategy to move their pieces away from a sacred line (similar to modern backgammon).

Before standard cube-shaped dice became widely available, ancient people employed various objects like knucklebones, nut shells or seashells in playing Petteia as dice. There may have been an element of gambling involved as good dice players could identify whether an opponent had an odd or even number in his hand; experts believed Petteia required much training in order to become skilled players; in fact one tutor of Alexander The Great wrote that citizens without states may be likened to isolated pieces in this game of Petteia!

Egyptian Senet

Ancient Egyptians found great entertainment in playing senet (pronounced sen-TAY), or “passing”, as an ancient board game that depicted tomb walls with depictions of it and used the box itself for burials. Senet (which means “passing”) became associated with death as its movement through 30 squares symbolized a person’s journey into afterlife.

The board consisted of three rows with ten houses/squares each. Five symbols representing sun, moon and sky deities could be found between squares 26 to 29; it is thought these were designed as symbols to help players get rid of all their pawns off the board first. The objective of this game was for one player to do this before any others.

While no original rules for the game have yet been discovered, scholars have pieced them together by studying undiscovered sets and depictions on tomb walls. Herein follows Gustave Jequier’s rules as described by Grunfeld’s Games of the World.

Backgammon

Gambling was widespread in ancient Rome and enjoyed by both slaves and freemen. Even military personnel and Emperors engaged in gambling activities. Suetonius records that Emperor Octavian Augustus regularly enjoyed playing dice games despite its social disapproval as an enjoyable pastime.

Egyptians employed an unusual form of gambling called senet, the rules for which aren’t completely known but scholars can reconstruct much of its gameplay using archaeological, textual and artistic evidence. Senet was played using a rectangular game board consisting of thirty squares arranged in three rows of ten with thirty players competing against one another to throw an ancient equivalent of dice to determine how far their draughtsmen could move – it required both skill and luck!

Ancient Greeks played a similar game using knuckle bones that closely resemble contemporary four-sided dice. As time progressed, clay cubic dice began to mimic modern ones more and more closely. Egyptian art also depicted senet as a physical link between living people and dead; reflecting their belief in the overlap of recreational activity with religious ritual.