You may want to vary the games A slight change in the rules or in the shape of the game board or in the number of counters may call for an entirely dif ferent strategy Just be sure that both players agree on the new rules before the game starts Most important have
Three in a Row Games Il over the world children play some form of a three in a row game for two players Tic tac toe is one example of such a game The object of the game is to be the first player to get three mark ers in a row on the game board It seems that people were playing such games long before the time of your great grandparents More than one hundred years ago scientists exam ining the rooftop of an ancient Egyptian temple found several strange diagrams carved in the sand stone slabs They looked like this Figure 0
ADA Figure 0 It turned out that every one of these diagrams is used as a game board for a three in a row game somewhere in the world Did the ancient Egyptians really play such games How could the scientists find out The temple was built 3 300 years ago to memorialize the king Pharaoh Seti I It stands in the town of Qur na Royal tombs were built on the west side of the Nile River This was where the setting sun entered the spirit world for the night according to Egyptian beliefs Ancient Egyptians believed that people would have a life after death and would need all the things that they enjoyed while they were alive So the tombs
contain many items that were important to them in life like clothing jewelry tools and even their pets The Egyptians painted the walls of their tombs and temples with the scenes from the lives of their kings and queens and other wealthy people Game boards and carved game pieces for Senet and other games were buried with the mummies of important Egyp tians That's how we know about the games that these people played when they were alive But no game boards for three in a row games have been found inside the tombs and no pictures of people playing such games appear on temple walls How did these diagrams come to be on the roof of the Pharaoh's temple Probably the workmen who built the temple played three in a row games on the stone slabs during their lunch break Instead of draw ing a fresh game board in the sand for each game they carved permanent diagrams in stone You may wonder whether Egyptian children played these games Perhaps fathers played such games with their children at home But they probably drew game boards in the dirt outside the house and wiped them away when the game was over leaving no trace From Egypt the games could easily have spread all over the world Greek scholars traveled to Egypt for higher education just as people nowadays go to col lege The Romans who probably learned the games from the Greeks spread them when they conquered parts of Europe the Middle East and North
