The Royal Game of Ur

This Psion Organiser II LZ/LZ64 game is based on the board game held by the British Museum. In this computer version you play against the Organiser .

The Royal Game of Ur is a two-player strategy race board game that was first played in ancient Mesopotamia during the early third millennium BC. One board, held by the British Museum, is dated to c. 2600 – c. 2400 BC, making it one of the oldest game boards in the world.

The Game of Ur received its name because it was first rediscovered by the English archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley during his excavations of the Royal Cemetery at Ur between 1922 and 1934. A partial description in cuneiform of the rules of the Game of Ur as played in the second century BC has been preserved on a Babylonian clay tablet written by the scribe Itti-Marduk-balāṭu. Based on this tablet and the shape of the gameboard, British Museum curator Irving Finkel reconstructed the basic rules of how the game might have been played. The object of the game is to run the course of the board and bear all one's pieces off before one's opponent. The game combines elements of both strategy and luck.

If you have never played the game before then you could watch two short YouTube videos

The Board Game