Board Games in Ancient Fiction: Egypt, Iran, Greece | Hacker News Reader

Board Games in Ancient Fiction: Egypt, Iran, Greece

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Interesting. Apion's description of the pessoi game mentioned in the Odyssey: flicking pebbles toward the Penelope-pebble convinces me more than translating pessoi as draughts. The problem with Apion's description is:

- There were 108 suitors (we know this from the Odyssey 16.245-254 [1]).

- All that Homer told us is: They were gladdening their hearts at pessoi in front of the doors, sitting on the hides of oxen which they themselves had slain (the Odyssey 1.106-108 [2]).

- You can't have 108 sitting men play the same game of marbles.

IMHO, pessoi was a 1:1 game and it was not a board game.

[1] https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Hom.+Od.+16.24...

[2] https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Hom.+Od.+1.106...

I've played Senet regularly for over 15 years. I was working over the holidays on a GNOME Senet game which I hope to put out there soon. I think it strikes a fun balance between chance and strategy. It probably won't appease chess die-hards on the complexity front, but for casual gameplay it's nice.

thank you for introducing me; i've never realized just how old some board games are. Even in rural eastern europe, my extended family has been playing "Nine Man's Morris" for decades, which I now know was likely a cultural custom there for centuries because of its history. I just thought it was some game they made up lol! Extremely cool

There was ancient Egypt and Greece. But isn't ancient Iran = Persia?

Like you wouldn't call (Kievan) Rus' "ancient Russia"

No.

Persia as a word for the whole region is an exonym, derived of the name of a single province and the people who lived in it. Iran is the endonym that the people living in the area have understood to refer to the entire area for millennia.

It's like calling the Netherlands Holland. Everyone understands what you are talking about, but it is definitely not very precise, and some people from the region might take an exception to it. Fine for conversational use, not so much in academic literature. You might talk about the Persian Empire when referring to the Achaeminids or the Sassanids, but that comes with the understanding that while the ruling class is Persian, they rule over an empire of people, many of which are Iranian but not Persian.

Persia is an exonym, but Greece and Egypt are also exonyms (Greeks and Greece was how Romans called them, not how they called themselves, while Egypt was the name used by Greeks, not by the natives of Egypt).

When talking about ancient people and countries, it is hard to avoid using exonyms, as they are usually much better known than whatever names may have been used by natives. In many cases such names have been discovered only relatively recently, during the last century, so they are known mostly by professionals and they are rarely found in popular literature. Moreover, frequently for the native names there is a much greater uncertainty about their original pronunciation than for exonyms.

Other such examples include confusing Monte Carlo for Monaco and saying Bohemia when talking about Czechia. During the cold war, the word Russia often got to stand in for the entirety of the Soviet Union.

England still stands in for the UK sometimes.

Example from In The Loop (nsfw language)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvr7rFzarYs

And then there's the opposite: using America for the USA. As an "American" I always found this weird, because Canada and Mexico and how about South America... Then there's Sp. norteamericano used in Mexico as if Mexico were not on the North America continent.

Names have familiar uses, besides the technical.

> You might talk about the Persian Empire when referring to the Achaeminids or the Sassanids, but that comes with the understanding that while the ruling class is Persian

not exactly. Persians are also majority of people in what's now called Iran (just like Russians are majority in Russia, this is the same naming pattern as for many countries) and renaming is a result of an invasion. Talking about "ancient Iran" before it Muslims arrived is talking about Persia

You are ignoring for example the Medes and Elam.

Ancient Iran is correct

Ancient texts weren't just mythic or didactic, they were playful, experimental, and self-aware about narrative mechanics

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