Ancient Board Games in Perspective

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[LyricFox]

Title: Ancient Board Games in Perspective Author(s): Irving L. Finkel (ed.) Publisher: London:  The British Museum Press Publication Date: 2007 ISBN: 0714111538 ISBN-13: Current Price and More Info from Amazon

From the Bryn Mawr Classic Review:
This book begins with an apology by the editor for the length of time for this volume. Seventeen years between conference and publication must be something of a record and inevitably creates high expectations among its readership - will the book be worth the wait? In this case I think the answer will be yes, if only because of the variety of the topics covered and the range of approaches to be found, from the practical to the analytical. The papers are arranged by type of games as well as chronologically within each type. There are several papers on Near Eastern, Egyptian and Greco-Roman and Chinese board games as well as chess, backgammon and mancala. There are also 'stand alone' papers, such as those on Hnefatafl and rithmomachia. The papers maintain a fairly consistent standard of quality, although perhaps the most consistent thing is the long shadow of H.J.R. Murray who appears in 16 bibliographies out of the 31 papers. His A History of Board Games other than Chess is obviously still the fount from which all discussion springs. As often happens with festschrift, some of the papers are quite accessible to non-experts, while others are extremely 'dense' and will be appreciated only by those who are pursuing in depth scholarly research. There will be very few who read this book cover to cover, but also few who will not find something useful. Given the large number of papers in this collection, I will limit myself to describing groups of papers, noting individual contributions as warranted or merited.

Read the full review at the Bryn Mawr Classic Review web site.

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Discussion and reviews of this book are welcome in this thread. If you've read the book, please tell us what you think of it and why.

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