Media Watch: Royal Game of Ur Gives Up Its Secrets
From Time:
Irving Finkel’s unruly beard is a living relic from another era, a gleefully eccentric declaration that he cares little for the conventions of modernity. Indeed, few people live in the past with such delight as the 57-year-old Englishman, who has worked for the past three decades in London’s British Museum, where he is the assistant keeper in the Department of the Middle East. At university, Finkel learned to read cuneiform, the oldest known type of writing, in which wedge-shaped symbols were pressed into clay with a reed. His Ph.D. thesis was on ancient Mesopotamian exorcistic magic – the art of getting rid of demons. If you want to know how men were cured of impotence in Babylon thousands of years ago, Finkel can tell you the spell.
But no subject, however esoteric, has consumed him more than the history of board games. At 11, Finkel became so captivated by a book about it that he wrote to the author and went to stay with him. “He showed me his huge game collection,” says Finkel, “and it transformed my life.” Finkel was especially fascinated by what he learned of the Royal Game of Ur, which was popular in Mesopotamia 4,600 years ago. As a boy, he made a wooden replica of the game, but the rules had long been forgotten. Today, he is the world’s foremost expert on the game, and has solved the mystery of how it was played.
What follows is a long history of Ur, the story of how it’s survived to the modern day, and how Finkel and his family play (what else?) Monopoly. Read all about Finkel and the Royal Game of Ur on Time.com.
Posted by W. Eric Martin on Jun 20, 2008 at 09:00 AM in Game News, Media Watch / 936
Comments:
You must register with BGN in order to comment. Registration is free, but if you appreciate the news, previews, reviews and other material posted on Boardgame News, please consider becoming a member to keep the info flowing to your screen!|
Here’s a quote from the article. “Monopoly has proved equally mutable. Invented by a Quaker woman a century ago, it was intended ‘as propaganda against the wicked practice of speculation in property’, says Finkel.” It’s ironic, but somehow indicative of the attitude toward modern gaming, that an expert on the history of boardgames has got his facts wrong about the most famous game of the 20th century. Lizzie Magie, the inventor of The Landlord’s Game, the progenitor of Monopoly, was not a Quaker (I don’t know much about the religion, but I suspect that a Quaker woman of that time would have been tossed out of her community if she did half the things the adventurous Ms. Magie did). It sounds as if he’s confusing two sets of facts, as the Quaker community did have an impact on the development of The Landlord’s Game during its long gestation as a folk game. Second, Magie created The Landlord’s Game to illustrate the principles behind Henry George’s Single Tax, which proposed taxing land and nothing else. The issue was that land created wealth for landowners while doing nothing to assist society, not, as far as I know, that there was rampant or damaging speculation in land. To be fair to Finkel, it’s possible that he isn’t characterizing Magie as a Quaker, but that the author of the story is. I note that the Monopoly entry in Wikipedia describes Magie (inaccurately) as a Quaker woman. But I still have to wonder about his comment concerning land speculation. Posted by Larry Levy on Jun 20, 2008 at 08:54 PM | #
|
Next entry: Game Review: Quartile
Previous entry: Kris Hall: What's In Your Trunk?
