Museum of Antiquity: A Description of Ancient Life

by L. W. Yaggy; T. L. Haines

Plutarch shows that dice were a very early invention in Egypt, and acknowledged to be so by the Egyptians themselves, since they were introduced into one of their oldest mythological fables; Mercury being represented playing at dice with the Moon, previous to the birth of Osiris, and winning from her the five days of the epact, which were added to complete the 365 days of the year.

It is probable that several games of chance were known to the Egyptians, besides dice and morra, and, as with the Romans, that many a doubtful mind sought relief in the promise of success, by having recourse to fortuitous combinations of various kinds; and the custom of drawing, or casting lots, was common, at least as early as the period of the Hebrew Exodus.

The games and amusements of children were such as tended to promote health by the exercise of the body, and to divert the mind by laughable entertainments. Throwing and catching the ball, running, leaping, and similar feats, were encouraged, as soon as their age enabled them to indulge in them; and a young child was amused with painted dolls, whose hands and legs, moving on pins, were made to assume various positions by means of strings. Some of these were of rude form, without legs, or with an imperfect representation of a single arm on one side. Some had numerous beads, in imitation of hair, hanging from the doubtful place of the head; others exhibited a nearer approach to the form of a man; and some, made with considerable attention to proportion, were small models of the human figure. They were colored according to fancy; and the most shapeless had usually the most gaudy appearance, being intended to catch the eye of an infant. Sometimes a man was figured washing, or kneading dough, who was made to work by pulling a string; and a typhonian monster, or a crocodile, amused a child by its grimaces, or the motion of its opening mouth. In the toy of the crocodile, we have sufficient evidence that the notion of this animal "not moving its lower jaw, and being the only creature which brings the upper one down to the lower," is erroneous. Like other animals, it moves the lower jaw only; but when seizing its prey, it throws up its head, which gives an appearance of motion in the upper jaw, and has led to the mistake.

The game of ball was of course generally played out of doors. It was not confined to children, nor to one sex, though the mere amusement of throwing and catching it appears to have been considered more particularly adapted to women. They had different modes of playing. Sometimes a person unsuccessful in catching the ball was obliged to suffer another to ride on her back, who continued to enjoy this post until she also missed it; the ball being thrown by an opposite player, mounted in the same manner, and placed at a certain distance, according to the space previously agreed upon; and, from the beast-of-burden office of the person who had failed, the same name was probably applied to her as to those in the Greek game, "who were called asses, and were obliged to submit to the commands of the victor."

Sometimes they caught three or more balls in succession, the hands occasionally crossed over the breast; they also threw it up to a height and caught it, like our "sky-ball;" and the game described by Homer to have been played by Halius and Laodamus, in the presence of Alcinous, was known to them; in which one party threw the ball as high as he could, and the other, leaping up, caught it on its fall, before his feet again touched the ground.

When mounted on the backs of the losing party, the Egyptian women sat sidewise. Their dress consisted merely of a short petticoat, without a body, the loose upper robe being laid aside on these occasions; it was bound at the waist with a girdle, supported by a strap over the shoulder, and was nearly the same as the undress garb of mourners, worn during the funeral lamentation on the death of a friend.

The balls were made of leather or skin, sewed with string, crosswise, in the same manner as our own, and stuffed with bran, or husks of corn; and those which have been found at Thebes are about three inches in diameter. Others were made of string, or of the stalks of rushes, platted together so as to form a circular mass, and covered, like the former, with leather. They appear also to have had a smaller kind of ball probably of the same materials, and covered, like many of our own, with slips of leather of a rhomboidal shape, sewed together longitudinally, and meeting in a common point at both ends, each alternate slip being of a different color; but these have only been met with in pottery.

In one of their performances of strength and dexterity, two men stood together side by side, and, placing one arm forward and the other behind them, held the hands of two women, who reclined backwards, in opposite directions, with their whole weight pressed against each other's feet, and in this position were whirled round; the hands of the men who held them being occasionally crossed, in order more effectually to guarantee the steadiness of the centre, on which they turned.

Sometimes two men, seated back to back on the ground, at a given signal tried who should rise first from that position, without touching the ground with the hand. And in this, too, there was probably the trial who should first make good his seat upon the ground, from a standing position.

Another game consisted in throwing a knife, or pointed weapon, into a block of wood, in which each player was required to strike his adversary's, or more probably to fix his own in the centre, or at the circumference, of a ring painted on the wood; and his success depended on being able to ring his weapon most frequently, or approach most closely to the line.