Walila, Morocco—according to A. Phys.org A possible game board has been identified in a medieval hammam, or public bath, in Morocco by Tim Paine of the University of Reading and colleagues, according to the report. The hammam is believed to have been built in the late eighth or early ninth century and was abandoned by the tenth or eleventh century. The game board is more than 13 inches long and about four inches wide, and was found on the top step leading into the cold plunge pool. It has three rows of at least 13 small holes. “The design of the board suggests it was used to play tab/sig, making it the earliest known evidence of the game in North Africa,” Penn said. Board games were popular in the medieval Islamic world, as recorded in poems and stories and evidenced by game boards found at archaeological sites in Arabia and the Middle East. The researchers concluded that the location of this game board, where it was visible to anyone coming in and out of the water, suggests that game playing was a regular part of the bathhouse experience. Read the original scholarly article about this research Libyan studies. To read about the excavation of another medieval bathhouse in the area, visit “Letters from Morocco: Splendor on the Edge of the Sahara“
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