cultures that a person seeing a relic from ancient Africa could
easily recognize it as something people played games with.
Some African mathematical games were very simple,
so lacking in complexity that whoever started fi rst was the
probable winner. Such games may have been used to teach
children how to count and how to do simple addition and
subtraction. Other games may have been intended to teach
multiplication and division. Others involved such complex
reasoning that they may have kept adult minds sharp for the
complicated business of trading with outsiders, which could
require people to keep in mind several diff erent quantities of
diff erent goods along with how much they were asking or of-
fering for the goods. Successful bargaining oft en depended
on all the involved traders understanding and agreeing on
numbers derived from hours of negotiations.
One of the oldest games is now called morabaraba. Its
origins are obscure, but it spread through herding communi-
ties in northern, eastern, and southern Africa. It may be the
ancestor of the European game called nine-man Morris. Ac-
cording to tradition, it was a way for African elders to teach
young people how to steal livestock, especially cattle. Th e ba-
sic idea is to capture an opponent’s cattle while moving one’s
own cattle toward the opponent’s edge of the board. A cow
is captured by lining up in a straight line three of one’s own
cattle in front of a cow of the opponent.
An interesting aspect of morabaraba and other ancient
African games is that a game board could be drawn on the
ground. All the players needed was a fairly fl at, open area
of suffi cient size for both them and the board. Even when
boards were fashioned from stone, clay, or wood, these ma-
terials were readily available, so play could begin at almost
any time—an indication of how much some ancient Africans
loved their games. Some boards were made to fold up to hold
game pieces and be easily carried.
One of the most popular types of games in Africa is the
sowing game, so named because its premise is planting seeds
for crops. Th e general name for all such games is mancala. Al-
though sometimes a game is sold in the Western world as man-
cala, the word actually was meant to refer to all sowing games.
Th e name derives from naqala, which is Arabic for “to move.”
Sowing games probably originated in eastern Africa, perhaps
in the ancient kingdom of Axum. Th ey spread through most
of Africa, along southern Asia to Indochina, and along the
Mediterranean coast to southern Europe. In ancient Africa
both men and women played these games avidly.
Th e g a m e s w e r e p r o b a b l y o r i g i n a l l y p l a y e d o n t h e g r o u n d ,
with holes dug in rows and stones, seashells, or seeds used for
playing pieces. Ancient boards made of stone and clay indi-
cate that there were several variations of play, because holes
would be arranged in diff erent patterns on diff erent boards.
In general, the objective of the game was to force an opponent
into a position in which no move was possible or to have more
game pieces than one’s opponent at the end of play.
Numerous variations evolved over many centuries, but
a sowing game was usually played by two people, each con-trolling one side or end of a game board. Game pieces, called
seeds, were usually gathered in a starting hole. A player could
move seeds from his hole into neighboring holes, which usu-
ally meant that he controlled those holes and could, during
a later turn, move seeds from them into other holes. Oft en
a player was allowed to move to capture a hole controlled by
her opponent, with the rules for how to capture a hole vary-
ing greatly depending on the variation of the game. A player’s
turn oft en ended when he ran out of moves, which could hap-
pen when he reached a hole he could not take. Moving seeds,
choosing how many to move and where to move them, oft en
involved complex thinking, requiring a player to have the
ability to foresee an opponent’s reactions to her moves, as well
as the ability to thwart her opponent’s strategy.EGYPT
BY EMILY JANE O’DELL
Ancient Egypt was not all work and no play. In fact, there
are many examples of sports and games from ancient Egypt.
We know of the recreational habits of ancient Egyptians from
surviving game pieces, written texts, and temple and tomb
carvings. Although the ancient Egyptians had nothing like
the Olympics of the ancient Greeks, they did participate in
athletic and recreational activities that included throwing,
running, wrestling, archery, boating, and board games.
We do not know very much about organized sports activ-
ity in ancient Egypt, but we do know that the pharaoh had a
recurring athletic event that symbolically and magically reju-
venated him for the kingship. During the sed festival, a jubilee
that traditionally occurred aft er 30 years of rule and thereaft er
every three years, the king was required to run around a spe-
cial courtyard in front of his courtiers and the public. Such
a court can still be seen at the step pyramid of the pharaoh
Djoser (r. ca. 2630–ca. 2611 b.c.e.) at Saqqara. Relief carvings
show royal guards running alongside kings’ chariots, and
some soldiers held the title “swift runner.” However, we do not
have evidence of competitive running until the time of King
Taharqa (r. ca. 690–664 b.c.e.), when a stela (a carved standing
stone) at Dashur records a government-sponsored footrace by
units of the army, with prizes awarded to the best runners.
Many people associate horses and chariotry with ancient
Egypt, but neither existed there until the Hyksos, a western
Asian people who ruled much of Egypt during the Fift eenth
and Sixteenth Dynasties (ca. 1674–ca. 1567 b.c.e.), intro-
duced them, along with powerful new composite bows. Th ese
new elements of sport and war were quickly assimilated into
ancient Egyptian culture. While target archery had been
around since the Fourth Dynasty (ca. 2575–ca. 2465 b.c.e.),
the addition of the composite bow and moving chariots made
the sport that much more diffi cult and exciting. King Th ut-
mose III (r. ca. 1479–ca. 1425 b.c.e.) claims on his stela in
Armant to have pierced copper with his arrows, but the most
famous example of such archery boasts comes from his son
Amenhotep II (r. ca. 1427–ca. 1401 b.c.e.): Known as the most1048 sports and recreation: Egypt0895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i1048 1048 10/10/07 2:30:53 PM