Sports

Sources

Ball Games. Little evidence relating to Mesopotamian sports has survived from the ancient Near East. Clay and faience balls have been excavated, but the rules for the games played with them are not clear. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, king Gilgamesh wears out the young men by playing a kind of human polo, riding on their backs while hitting a puck with a stick.

Individual Sports. Aside from the royal hunt, sports were often ritualistic. Seals and sculpture show wrestling and boxing matches between real and mythical creatures. A ritual text from Mari (circa eighteenth century b.c.e.) describes wrestlers, gymnasts, and jugglers performing in

the Temple of Ishtar. Gymnasts appear on reliefs in Anatolia. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, king Gilgamesh and his comrade Enkidu engage in a wrestling match. At Ugarit in western Syria, circa 1500 - circa 1200 b.c.e., the god Baal was depicted as a sportsman who is accomplished at wrestling, running, throwing the javelin, and hunting with a bow. In both Akkadian and Ugaritic, the phrase “to bend the knee” means to admit defeat in a sport. In Hittite Anatolia, circa 1600 - circa 1200 b.c.e., wrestling, boxing, running, jousting, and weight throwing were connected with rituals.

Sources

Piotr Bienkowski, “Sport,” in Dictionary of the Ancient Near East, edited by Bienkowski and Alan Millard (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), p. 276.

Karen Rhea Nemet-Nejat, Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia, Daily Life through History (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998).