afts, and other purposes
connected with water, as for beams and rafters.

[Page Decoration]

GAMES AND SPORTS OF THE EGYPTIANS.

The game of _morra_ was common in ancient as well as modern Italy, and
was played by two persons, who each simultaneously threw out the
fingers of one hand, while one party guessed the sum of both. They
were said in Latin, "micare digitis," and this game, still so common
among the lower order of Indians, existed in Egypt, about four
thousand years ago, in the reigns of the Osirtasens.

The same, or even a greater, antiquity may be claimed for the game of
draughts, or, as it has been called, chess. As in the two former, the
players sat on the ground, or on chairs, and the pieces, or men, being
ranged in line at either end of the tables, moved on a chequered
board, as in our own chess.

The pieces were all of the same size and form, though they varied on
different boards, some being small, others large with round summits:
some were surmounted by human heads; and many were of a lighter and
neater shape, like small nine-pins, probably the most fashionable
kind, since they were used in the palace of king Remeses. These last
seem to have been about one inch and a half high, standing on a
circular base of half an inch in diameter; but some are only one inch
and a quarter in height, and little more than half an inch broad at
the lower end. Others have been found, of ivory, one inch and six
eighths high, and one and an eighth in diameter, with a small knob at
the top, exactly like those represented at Beni Hassan, and the tombs
near the Pyramids.

They were about equal in size upon the same board, one set black, the
other white or red; or one with round, the other with flat heads,
standing on opposite sides; and each player, raising it with the
finger and thumb, advanced his piece towards those of his opponent;
but though we are unable to say if this was done in a direct or a
diagonal line, there is reason to believe they could not take
backwards as in the Polish game of chess, the men being mixed together
on the board.

It was an amusement common in the houses of the lower classes, as in
the mansions of the rich; and king Remeses is himself portrayed on the
walls of his palace at Thebes, engaged in the game of chess with the
ladies of his household.

The modern Egyptians have a game of chess, very similar, in the
appearance of the men, to that of their ancestors, which they call
_dam