Re: The Game - Edit 1
Before modification by DomA at 12/05/2010 03:46:03 PM
According to Lostpedia it was Senet which according to Wikipedia is: Senet (or senat[1]), a board game from predynastic and ancient Egypt. The oldest hieroglyph representing a Senet game dates to circa 3100 BC.[2] The full name of the game in Egyptian was zn.t n.t ḥˁb meaning the "game of passing."
Ah thanks. It looks a lot like the Babylonian ancestor of backgammon (but the board isn't rectangular but as cross-like wings at one end, IRRC), and I wondered if it was their own variation on the design, or if they picked an historical one.
They picked the oldest game they could find, and the one with the murkiest history. Variations on the game are found in many civilizations, but scholars don't know if it spread by diffusion from a single origin, or was re invented by various civilizations.