As apart of my Game Design course, an opportunity to visit the British Museum came up.
I was looking forward to it as I was basing one of my individual coding projects on ancient Egypt.
As well as this I was quite interested in the architecture of the building itself. I recall watching a documentary on how they built the glass roof structure above the central courtyard with thousands of unique connections.
We had the pleasure of a quick tour over game related items by Irvine Finkel. Mr Finkel is currently the assistant keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian script, languages and cultures in the Department of the Middle East in the British Museum.
Here are some ancient chess pieces from India. Far from the abstract nature of modern pieces these are far more interesting and animated. (Apologies for the poor quality picture.)
I have to say I was somewhat disappointed that I didn't get to see the actual Royal Game of Ur discovered at the Royal Cemetery of Ur in Iraq. I believe it was out on loan and was instead replaced by what looked like a low quality picture stuck to some cardboard.
However I was surprised I did spot some very interesting astragali made from various materials to imitate real knucklebones from animals.
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