Imagine you're sitting in a room with your friends, sunlight shining through the window.

On the table in front of you, there's a colorful board with little pieces waiting for you to roll the dice.

Your heart beats a little faster as your turn comes around. You're ready to play.

Now imagine you're not in your house at all. Instead, you're in another country a thousand years ago,

and you're about to play a thousand years ago, and you're

about to play a board game that your family has played for generations. The rules are

different, but the excitement is the same. People have been playing board games for a

very long time. In fact, some of the oldest board games are older than the oldest books,

or even some of the oldest buildings.

The very first board games we know about are from places like ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.

That's where people lived more than 4,000 years ago, along the Nile River and between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

One of the earliest games we know of is called Senet. People played it in

Egypt over 5,000 years ago. Archaeologists have found Senate boards in the tombs of pharaohs, including King

Tutankhamun. The board has 30 squares set in three rows of 10. Players move their pieces using sticks instead of dice.

If you were an ancient Egyptian, you might have believed the game helped you travel safely

to the afterlife.

Far away, in ancient Mesopotamia, people played a game called the Royal Game of Urr.

This game is at least 4,500 years old.

Archaeologists found a beautiful game board in a royal tomb in Ur, which is now part of Iraq.

The board is decorated with shells and shiny stones.

People played with two sets of pieces and used tetrahedral dice,

which looked a little like chunky pyramids. Historians think the royal game of Err was a race

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