Additional 5,000-Year-Old Game Pieces Unearthed in Turkey

İZMİR, TURKEY—Hurriyet Daily News reports that some additional pieces of a game set first unearthed in 2012 at Başur Mound in southeastern Turkey have been recovered by a team of researchers led by Haluk Sağlamtimur of Ege University. The game is thought to have been an ancestor of chess that was played in a cemetery at the site some 5,000 years ago. “This is probably a grave gift,” Sağlamtimur said. “This game set does not seem to be played too much; there is no wear on it.” Similar figurative game pieces have been found in Egypt, he added. The game board, which would have provided clues as to how the game was played, has not been found and probably disintegrated. “When we consider the shapes and numbers of the stones, we estimate that the game is based on number four,” Sağlamtimur explained. To read about amulets left throughout the first millennium B.C. at a mountaintop sanctuary in southeastern Turkey, go to "How to Pray to a Storm God."