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In the early nineteenth century, British archaeologist William Matthew Flinders Petrie led a number of important excavations throughout Egypt, digging up almost 3000 ancient graves filled with personal possessions and items to protect the spirit in the afterlife. Sadly, many of these belonged to children, and it was in one of these graves that Petrie uncovered one of his most surprising finds: a set of skittles. The tomb, dated to 5200 BC, contained a number of balls and nine stones shaped, according to Petrie, like vases. At first, the archaeologists took these to be ornaments, but they soon realized that they had discovered the earliest evidence of bowling, one of the most unexpected ancient Egyptan inventions.
It is believed that the ancient game was rather different than the regulated, and often extremely competitive, version played today; it simply involved rolling a ball at a set of stationary objects at some specified distance. It is unlikely that they had specific surfaces or ‘alleys’ in which to play, or that there was any way of guaranteeing the uniformity of the pins. The balls were often made of husks of corn, covered in leather and bound with string, but could also be made out of stone or even porcelain. The primitive form of bowling enjoyed by the Egyptians was later adopted by other ancient civilizations, including the Romans, and eventually developed into the game we still play today.
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