Unsupported Speculation

To begin with, many people ask me what UR means. It was an ancient city called Ur in the Babylonian Empire. This empire existed during the Bronze Age, which is related to this post.

Babylon existed in what is now Iraq, and the city of Ur was at a place that used to be coastal, but the ocean level of the Persian Gulf has dropped a bit since those times, and now the site of Ur is well inland.

Ur was also close to the mouth of the Euphrates River system where it connected to the Persian Gulf, and like many Bronze Age civilizations, they planted their crops near water sources such as these in order to not need irrigation.

Now the game board of The Royal Game of UR is shaped like a letter H. Also, one of the sides of this H is thicker than the other, and I suspect that the game and its board is supposed to be a subtle representation of an ox pulling a plow through a field. The thicker side of this H is supposed to be the Ox, and the thinner side is supposed to be the Plow and farmer who is controlling the plow to make sure it makes the furrow where he wants it in the field.

The way the pieces move on the board also seems to support this idea, because they begin on the thicker side of this H, and first go forwards in the direction the ox would face as it was doing the pulling, and then the pieces converge along the center and are moved backwards until they reach the thinner side of the H, where they reverse direction to go forwards again for two moves before a piece is scored towards one of the player’s win of the game.

This last reversal forwards reminds me of what a plow does; ie It splits and turns the earth over as it is dragged through the ground. Finally, the pieces themselves are like the seeds that would be planted in the ground after the furrow is dug. Thus, the game represents two players racing to plant their seeds before the other player, which is like the REAL race to get the fields seeded in planting season in order to be able to harvest ripe crops before it gets too out of season and crops cannot ripen anymore.

Now the ancient Egyptians had a hieroglyphic of a literal picture of a plow, and this symbol was the root symbol of the Ancient Hebrew symbol of the letter Zayin, which by then did look like the letter H but on its side, and also translated as ‘Plow’.

And so I’m suggesting that The Royal Game of UR was both a representation of an Ox and Plow, as well as perhaps a well known letter/symbol of the plow, which they may have picked up due to their contact with other Bronze Age cultures and civilizations.