There’s a nook in every home: it’s sparsely lit, with colorful boxes stacked together in an odd recreation of jenga. Board games and shoeboxes, loose dice and folded Monopoly money: it’s the corner in every home, where adults and children wander when the days drag and there’s nothing but weather-droning on television. Unsurprisingly, the modern age did not create board games, but rather borrowed them from existing medieval and ancient templates. A particularly interesting keepsake is one from ancient Egypt: Hounds and Jackals. Today, most Egyptians are more familiar with its current adaptation, Chutes and Ladders (colloquially: Snakes and Ladders or El Sellem w’El Tea’ban in Arabic). The ancients, it seems, were keen on their competitiveness – just like their ever-cynical contemporaries. What’s on the board? The board was a low structure, resting on four bulls’ legs and shaped like the flat side of an axe-head. Some have also likened the shape to a shield, with its sides curved inward, and a palm tree painted down its center. Surrounding the tree were 58 evenly arranged holes, wherein large, cane-like playing pieces could be placed. At the head of each piece,…
