Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Museum
Ivory board game with fifty-eight gold-inlaid holes, unearthed from a Late Bronze Age palace hoard.
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About this audio guide
This guide to the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Museum in Chicago starts with a single object in the case ahead: an ivory board cut with fifty-eight holes, every one of them meant to be played. It traces the board back to Megiddo, a fortress city in what is now northern Israel, where this institute's own archaeologists dug for nearly a decade and a half in the early twentieth century, pulling a hoard of carved ivory from a layer dating to the thirteenth century before our era. Look closely at the gold and blue paste inlaid around every fifth hole, and picture the players who once pushed pegs around this board by lamplight.
This audio guide was created using AI.