SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Iraq is planning to make the Royal Game of Ur played in ancient Mesopotamia, said an Iraqi official.
The 5,000-year-old game comes from the royal tombs at Ur, an important Sumerian city-state in ancient Mesopotamia, in south of Iraq’s Dhi Qar province.
Director of Iraq’s Nasiriyah Museum Amir Abdulrazaq said on Friday that the museum would begin making 100 boards of the game of Ur and would distribute it over inventors and talented people.
“The copies of the game will only be sold at Amazon website,” he said in a statement.
“Youths will be trained on the game so that they will play it inside the museum as an effort to renovate the heritage of the land between two rivers [Mesopotamia],” he added.
“The game is now sold via Amazon and the price of each is $55.’
According to Otago Museum, the game of Ur was very popular in the past as boards have been found over the Middle East and beyond, including Crete, even making it all the way to Sri Lanka.
“The modern game of backgammon is probably related to the Royal game of Ur and later overtook it in popularly,” the Otago Museum said on its website.
