Reply #8: Goddess Iconography in Ancient Board Games

[Dover]

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Today when people play backgammon or Xiang qi they are probably not thinking about the esoteric and religious aspects of the games. But to ancient peoples, playing the earliest forms of these games included more than the thrill of pitting skill and luck against an opponent; it also incorporated a recognition of and familiarity with the underlying esoteric and religious components and ethos as expressed in the iconography of the games. This paper is an introductory discussion of three ancient symbols that are part and parcel of the earliest board games: the grid/square, the rosette and the serpent. It will explore both how this iconography was incorporated into those early games and how it expressed recognition of and reverence for the Goddess.


Ancients' World View as Expressed in Art.

Modern man generally views art as an expression of esthetic values disconnected from any collective social or spiritual meaning. But ancient peoples did not view art as we do today. To them, art was first and foremost an expression of religious belief and dogma through the use of a comprehensive system of symbols and icons.1

The ancients' use of decorative elements was representational, highly symbolic and embued with religious significance from the earliest times; this approach permeated artistic expression from the magnificent Egyptian tomb paintings 2 to the delicate inlay work of shell and mother of pearl on the gameboards excavated from the Royal Tombs of Ur .

One of the oldest carved stone vases discovered in Sumer, the Warka vase, circa 3500 BCE, demonstrates the practice of applying sacred expression to even the most mundane of objects. The vase is nearly four feet tall. On the upper tier is the figure of a nude man who may possibly represent the sacrificial king. He approaches the robed queen Inanna. Inanna wears a horned headdress. The Queen of Heaven stands in front of two looped "asherah" poles, phallic symbols sacred to the goddess. On the lower tier a group of nude priests bring baskets of gifts, including fruits, to pay homage to the goddess.3 In their earliest expressions in writing and art work, ancient peoples demonstrated a belief in the axiom "as above, so below".

In Egypt, this mindset is perhaps best embodied in what they call their writing - "medu netcher", "the words of the gods": The Egyptians believed that writing was given to them by Thoth, the keeper of records among the gods. But Thoth didn't just give humans writing, he gave them the language of the gods. To write hieroglyphs was to speak "god-language." In other words, the Egyptians believed that the gods "spoke" in pictures and in things. This is a powerfully important insight into the Egyptian world view. If the "words of the gods" are pictures and things, that means that the entire world is a speech by the gods, full of meaning and symbol; this means that the universe itself can be "read."

Since Thoth taught humans the "words of the gods," he taught them also how to read and understand the universe itself. Above everything else, understand that for the Egyptian everything in the world and universe was writing that resembled all the human writing they inscribed on their tombs and monuments. For this reason, while Egyptian writing is a form of art, all Egyptian art is a form of writing-it has meaning, symbolism, and precision.4The game of Mehen is an excellent example of the ancient Egyptians' cultural expression and manifestation of this mind-set. Timothy Kendall noted

"It is not possible to know (with the evidence we have) if this deity was inspired by the game itself, or whether the game was inspired by an already existing mythology. . . . Mehen's role was essential, for if Re were not protected from these enemies, he might not rise in the morning, which would result in the cessation of all life. In Egyptian belief, 'life' applied not only to the living but also to the dead, who were believed to travel with the sun and to rise, reborn, with him at dawn." 5 ...cont'd

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