Royal Game of Ur: A 4,500-Year-Old Race Through the Stars
One of the oldest board games ever discovered, unearthed from the Royal Tombs of Ur in ancient Mesopotamia. Roll the dice, race your pieces across the shared middle lane, capture your opponent’s stragglers, and land on a rosette for another turn.
Choosing a Ruleset
Serious modern reconstructions of Ur disagree with each other, so four are offered here rather than picking just one, plus Custom for making your own. They are sourced and credited via royalur.net/rules and playur.org. The mechanics themselves aren’t copyrightable, only their specific text and art, so everything here is built independently. New to Ur? Tap Tutorial under the board for a step-by-step lesson in the basics or in tournament rules.
Finkel (default)
Irving Finkel's British Museum reconstruction, the most commonly played version today: 7 pieces, 4 dice, rosettes safe and worth an extra roll.
Masters
James Masters' alternative path: rosettes every 4th square, 3 dice, rosettes not safe. Rolling 0 moves you 4 squares instead of forfeiting.
Blitz
Masters path with only 5 pieces. Captures grant an extra roll on top of rosettes. Games can swing hard on a single lucky turn.
Tournament Engine
The rules of the société internationale d'Ur, used at its tournaments since MIT in 2022. Masters path, 5 pieces, 4 dice. Rosettes are safe but give no extra roll. Your pieces can stack on rosettes and then move, and get captured, as one. If you have no forward move you may move backward or pass. A setting allows backward moves at any time, for groups that play that way.
Custom
Choose your own: 4 dice or 3 (where 0 counts as 4), the Bell, Masters, Skiriuk or Murray path, 3 to 7 pieces, safe or unsafe rosettes, extra rolls for rosettes or captures, stacking, and backward moves. Custom games are remembered on your device.
How to Play
Roll
Click or tap Roll Dice at the start of your turn. Binary dice are thrown (4 for Finkel/Blitz/Tournament, 3 for Masters); your roll is how many landed marked-side-up.
Move
Click or tap a ringed piece to move it exactly that many squares along your path: from hand, through your own squares, across the shared row, then off. Choose Show path to draw your route on the board. Green squares are forward moves and blue squares are backward moves. Undo takes back a move but keeps the same roll.
Capture & Rosettes
Landing on an opponent sends them back to hand, unless the square is a safe rosette (depends on ruleset). Rosettes may grant another roll immediately.
Bear Off & Win
Roll the exact number needed to bear a piece off. First player to bear off all pieces wins (7 under Finkel/Masters, 5 under Blitz/Tournament).
Captain Tips
Fight for the Middle Rosette
Under any ruleset where rosettes are safe, the shared row's rosette is the most valuable square on the board.
Don't Bunch Up
A piece on an unsafe shared square is one good roll away from being sent home.
Race Pieces Home
Pieces already borne off can never be captured. Get them off once you're ahead.
Watch Tournament Stacks
In Tournament Engine, capturing a stacked rosette sends back two or more pieces at once.
History
The board was excavated by Leonard Woolley in the 1920s from the Royal Cemetery at Ur (southern Iraq), dating to roughly 2600–2400 BCE. The rules come from a Babylonian cuneiform tablet (~177 BCE), translated by Irving Finkel in the 1980s, roughly 2,400 years after the boards were buried.
That gap is why Bell, Finkel, Masters, Murray, and Skiriuk disagree on finer details. Finkel’s rosette placement (4th, 8th, 14th squares) matches most digital versions today; Masters, Blitz, and Tournament Engine are three other real, actively played reconstructions.
Status: reconstructed. The boards survive, and the rules have been pieced together from the tablet by scholars. Ur did not vanish completely, though. A close relative, Asha, was played by the Jewish community of Cochin in India until the 1950s. Ruby Daniel described it to Irving Finkel in 1987, so a descendant of Ur survived into living memory. Today the game has a new life, with clubs and tournaments organised by the société internationale d’Ur and an online community at royalur.net.
Why Play Royal Game of Ur?
Ancient Strategy
Dice luck meets tactical piece placement. A race game with real decisions every turn.
Mobile Ready
Tap to roll and move. Portrait board and touch-friendly controls sized for phones and tablets.
Always Free
Play vs AI or pass-and-play on the same device. No downloads and no ads.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Royal Game of Ur free to play?
- Yes. Free in your browser. No download and no account.
- Can I play on mobile?
- Yes. Tap Roll, then tap a piece to move. The portrait board and HUD are sized for phones and tablets.
- Which ruleset should I start with?
- Finkel is the default and most widely played reconstruction. Try Masters or Blitz for faster variants, Tournament Engine for the tournament ruleset (it has its own tutorial), or Custom to mix your own.
- How do tournament rules work?
- Rosettes are safe but give no extra roll. Pieces on the same rosette stack and move together. If you have no forward move you may move a piece backward, even to capture, or pass instead.
- Can I play with a friend?
- Yes. Choose 2 Players mode for local pass-and-play on the same device.
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