While backgammon history is a long and interesting one, historians and archeologists may never be sure of the exact origin of the game or all the games it may have stemmed from.   One of the first games in backgammon history found to be similar to the backgammon board is the Senet board, found to be played in Egypt circa 3500 BC.  Dated back to circa 3000 BC, the oldest known backgammon boards may have been found in 2004 in what is southeast Iran today.


In looking at backgammon history, we know that the backgammon game has been banned in many different countries in many different times.  This usually seems to occur when backgammon gambling becomes a worrisome issue in the times of the society of the time.  This was the case circa 1190 in England, when an order was placed prohibiting those that ranked lower than knights to play when King Richard I had trouble with betting in the backgammon game.


Other bits of backgammon history show Tabulae’s  interesting spread across Europe in the 11th thru 16th centuries, where at the time the game Tabulae was very similar to backgammon.  There is question of whether the backgammon game is a varitation of what was originally Tabulae.