Backgammon is one of the oldest games still in play, although the term backgammon has not been in use for nearly as long as the game has existed. The etymology of the word “backgammon” is probably Saxon. The Saxon word baec meaning back, and gamen, meaning game suggests a game in which the players are sent back. Chaucer, the English poet (c. 1340–1400), alludes to a game of “Tables,” played with three dice, in which “men” were moved from the opponent’s “tables.” But games like backgammon predate Chaucer by centuries.

Backgammon history is already in evidence in Sumer, a collection of city-states around the Lower Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, in what is now southern Iraq. Sir Leonard Wooley, in his research of the ancient Ur of the Chaldees, the Biblical home of Abraham, described what may have been a backgammon board on the back of a game board excavated at Ur. An investigation originating here leads us to the ancient games of Senet, Thau, and Seega.

Senet is probably the oldest board game known to man. Senet (or Senat) is the Egyptian word for sister. Drawings of the game were found in the tomb of Merknera (3300-2700 BC) and although there have been claims made that other games predate Senet, it is the only game find confirmed for this early date.

In the era between the 16th century BC and the 11th century BC, Senet became known as a powerful talisman for the dead. It was believed that good players of Senet had special divine protection and therefore the game was often placed in the tomb alongside the departed along with other useful items for the perilous journey through the underworld.

The game spread to the Levant; an area bordered by the Mediterranean Sea in the west, the Arabian desert in the north, and Mesopotamia to the east.  Crete and Cyprus also adopted the game, although these cultures attached an exclusively secular significance to it.

Senet is probably the ancestor of backgammon. Over 40 ancient Egyptian boards have survived. The board had 30 squares, or “houses”; three rows of ten squares each, and looked like this:

Square 15, showing a symbol of life and known as the “House of Rebirth” was probably the starting square. Square #26 was a “good” square, while square # 27, water, was a “bad” square to land on.

Pawns were also found with the games. The earliest games had seven pawns per player; later paintings of the game show seven, five, or occasionally, ten pawns per player.

Although the exact rules of Senet are not known, conjecture suggests that players moved their pawns according to a throw of sticks; each stick had two sides, and there were four of these sticks. Later, knucklebones, small pyramid shapes, were introduced. See figure 1 below.

Figure 1 - Knucklebone Shapes

Knucklebones were the predecessors of modern-day dice.

Archeologist Timothy Kendall formulated the following rules for Senet, and one can see the similarity to our modern-day backgammon. The arrows in figure 2 below show the order of progression for the pawns. The white men belong to the first player and the black men belong to the second player, each sitting on opposite sides of the board. The object of the game is to remove all your men from the board, as in modern backgammon. Each player moved his pieces according to the throw of the sticks or knucklebones. If your man landed on your opponent’s piece, the two pieces exchanged places on the board. Any two of your men in adjacent squares were protected from being “hit.” If your man landed on a house occupied by your own piece, it could not move.

Each of the special squares had an effect on the play:

Square #26 is the House of Happiness. You can not skip over this house. Each piece must land on it exactly.

Any pawn reaching square #27 returned to square 15, the House of Rebirth.

Square #28 is the House of Three Truths and can only be left when a three is thrown.

Square #29 is the House of Re-Atoum and can only be left when a two is thrown.

Square #30 is the last house, and throwing a one will get your piece off the board.

Figure 2

Both Senet and Thau are similar to backgammon in that they have an element of race. In Thau there is no “hitting,” but rather capturing. The bearing off the board in Thau is similar to backgammon, and it is possible that backgammon is a fusion between the two ancient games.

Seega, although considered a modern game, has ancient roots. It was found cut into the side of a stone which was set into a pyramid, suggesting that the board was cut into the stone prior to its being used as a building block, since players could not have played on a board in a vertical position. Seega pieces are also known as dogs, signifying a status of servitude, a well established and time-honored relationship in ancient cultures such as the Hebrews and Canaanites. The pieces that are captured in Seega are also referred to respectfully as friends, signifying that even in servitude, they have an important function. Seega is more a game of skill than of chance.

The Seega board is a straightforward grid, though varying in size. It can have five, seven, or nine rows and columns, and is played using an appropriate number of pieces. The most commonly played variant is the seven by seven board where each player has 24 pieces. The object of the game is to capture your opponents’ pieces. Seega requires strategy and is a fast-paced game. It has traditionally been played on the ground with the board drawn in the sand, and is still played among Bedouins in this manner.

There is evidence that a game called Ludus Duodecim Scriptorum was played during the Roman era, between 509 BC and 31 BC. The name means “The Game of Twelve Lines.” It was probably derived from Senet. This Roman game was later replaced by a similar game that used two rows and 12 points, closer to today’s backgammon. The name Tabula or Tables was first used, and was actually a generic word for “board game.”

The earliest form of backgammon appeared in Asia in approximately 800 A.D. The game was known as Nard. It was played with two dice and the design on the board represented a year. On each side of the board there were 12 points representing the months of the year; the total of 24 points represented the hours in a day. The 30 checkers represented the days in a month; the sum of the opposing sides on the dice were the seven days of the week. The two sets of checker colors represented day and night.

The first codification of the rules of the game were found in a document written sometime in the 13th century, in the Alfonso X manuscript. Alfonso X was a Spanish king in the Middle Ages who commissioned The Book of Games, which had 98 pages and 150 color illustrations, and covered chess, dice, and "Tables." The only known original of the book exists in the library of the Monastery of San Lorenzo del Escorial in Spain.

In the late 13th and early 14th century, "Tables" enjoyed a renaissance in England, and the game is mentioned in popular literature for the first time in over 500 years. Complete game boards from this period were found at St. Denis near Paris (c.1200 AD), Gloucester (c.1220 AD), and Freiburg in Germany (c. 1300 AD).

In the 17th century, the name backgammon was  adopted. The first known use of the word backgammon was in 1645, although the name "Tables" was still in use. By the end of the seventeenth century, the name backgammon became customary.

The game’s popularity seems to have waned until the sixteenth century when a variant of the game, known as tric-trac, spread through Europe. The exact rules are still unknown. The earliest known records of this new game appeared in Hoyle's "A Short Treatise on the Game of Backgammon" from 1743. The game included the doubling rule. It also included winning a double game (a gammon).

We know that backgammon had arrived in America by the 18th century, since Thomas Jefferson wrote about his losses in a June 1776 entry in his journal.