Preface -- Notes on the contributors -- Board games in perspective: an introduction / Irving L. Finkel -- Homo ludens, the earliest board games in the Near East / St. John Simpson -- The royal game of Ur / Andrea Becker -- On the rules for the royal game of Ur / Irving L. Finkel -- Mehen, the ancient Egyptian game of the serpent / Timothy Kendall -- Were there gamesters in pharaonic Egypt? / W. J. Watt -- The Egyptian game of Senet and the migration of the soul / Peter A. Piccione -- The game of hounds and jackals / A. J. Hoerth -- The Egyptian 'game of twenty squares', is it related to 'marbles' and the game of the snake? / Edgar B. Pusch -- Board games and their symbols from Roman times to early Christianity / Anita Rieche -- Inscribed imperial Roman gaming-boards / Nicholas Purcell -- Notes on pavement games of Greece and Rome / R. C. Bell -- Late Roman and Byzantine game boards at Aphrodisias / Charlotte Roueché -- Graeco-Roman pavement signs and game boards, a British Museum working typology / R. C. Bell and C. M. Roueché -- Game boards at Vijayanagara, a preliminary report / John M. Fritz and David Gibson -- Horse coins, pieces for Da Ma, the Chinese board-game 'driving the horses' / Joe Cribb -- An introduction to board games in late imperial China / Andrew Lo -- Go in China / John Fairbairn -- The beginnings of chess / Michael Mark -- Grandmasters of Shatranj and the dating of chess / R. D. Keen, with an addendum by Richard Eales -- Changing cultures, the reception of chess into western Europe in the Middle Ages / Richard Eales -- Board games in central Asia and Iran / Grigori L. Semenov -- Board games and backgammon in ancient Indian sculpture / Micaela Soar -- Notes on the early history of the backgammon family in China / Andrew Lo -- A late eleventh-century tabulae set from Gloucester / I. J. Stewart -- A brief history of backgammon and the design of the board / Malcolm J. Watkins -- An overview of Mancala rules and variations / L. Russ -- The typological spread of the game of Mancala / Philip Townshend -- Mancala game boards as African emblems of status / R. A. Walker -- The pursuit of Hnefatafl / Ian Riddler -- Rithmomachia, the philosophers' game, an introduction to its history and rules / Jurgen Stigter, with a postscript by Peter Mebben and Jurgen Stigter-- Robert Stewart Culin and New World games / Bonita Freeman-Witthoft -- Index