Games

Ancient Indus Civilization games and game pieces.

An Ivory Chess Disc and Two Chess Figures

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"Objects used for games are not many. Those that may be said to be unmistakable are balls and marbles in stone, shell, faience and pottery; dice of the same materials except shell; and some gamesmen of tetrahedral or chessman shape, the latter hardly distinguishable from baetyls."

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Game Board

A wide variety of game pieces from Mohenjo-daro on a modern wooden board. Sir John Marshall, one of the earliest excavators at Mohenjo-daro writes in the monumental work summarizing the first finds at the site (Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization

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Indus Game Board

Sir John Marshall continues describing the game pieces found at Mohenjo-daro (Mohenjo-daro, pp. 557-59): "The poorer people used gamesmen made of pieces of potsherd roughly rubbed into a suitable shape.

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Linga?

Sir John Marshall has an extensive section (see Images 2 and 3 for his references) on linga, yoni and the often difficult job of distinguishing them from game pieces and stones in general (Mohenjo-daro, p.

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Two Gaming Pieces

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This excerpt refers to mound F excavations in Extension Ab. "Another trial trench which had to be cut through a thick layer of earth and debris revealed a huge mass of broken earthen vessels of different shapes and designs varying in size from small

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Gameboard

Note that the conical piece in the lower left is likely not a gaming piece but a pointed cone. Dr. Kenoyer writes (Ancient Cities, p. 120). "In most cultures, ritual games are used for predicting the future or educating children about social and

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Gameboard?

Ernest J.H. Mackay identified this piece as a gameboard, and wrote in Further Excavations (p. 574-5): "We have been fortunate in finding two boards on which same kind of game was played, though unluckily neither is complete.