Footnotes :  

256 Peter Green: “The Parthenon”, Newsweek Book Division, New York, 1973, pages 128 and 129.
 

257 Nigel Pennick: “Secret Games of the Gods: Ancient Ritual Systems in Board Games”, Samuel Weiser, Inc., York Beach, Maine, 1989, pages 48 and 49.

   The Religious Board Game on the Phaistos Disk. Copyright 2012 by Peter Aleff by Peter Aleff    Scroll 35

6.5.3. A guess about the journey of the Goose

These few but telltale adaptations (plus the lengthening of the track from 61 to 63 fields, and some fiddling with the “Bridge” and “Inn” to which we will also return in Volume 2) transformed the pagan game on the Disk into the Christian Game of the Goose.

It seems therefore quite possible that the postulated widely played and well- liked original game, which was closely connected with a deeply rooted belief system, would easily have survived the officially declared end of those beliefs, particularly since these beliefs, like the game, had not been replaced but only re- packaged.

If we assume thus that a game based on that from the Disk could have been popular in ancient Greece, as Molière’s remark also seems to imply, and that this game could have survived in its culture, just as many other board games did and do in theirs’, then the sudden appearance of the Goose Game in Renaissance Florence becomes easy to understand.

6.5.3.1. From Athens to Italy

The successor of the Greek civilization was the Byzantine Empire which continued many of its official traditions and probably even more of its folkways. The capital of that Empire, Constantinople, was conquered by the Turks in 1453, and Athens fell to them three years later.

At that time, a stream of Greek fugitives emigrated to Italy with as many of their books and other possessions as they could manage to bring.  The prosperous city of Florence attracted a particularly large colony of these refugees, possibly because in the 70 years before its fall, Athens had been ruled by a Florentine family of considerable culture and learning²⁵⁶ who encouraged scholars and so gave Florence a good name among that group.

To this push came the pull of Cosimo de Medici (1389 to 1464), an ancestor of Francesco.  Cosimo founded the famous Medici Library and had the means and motivation to sponsor these scholars.  The Renaissance was just beginning in northern Italy and stimulated interest in all things Classical, whether Latin or Greek, so he and his descendants paid lavishly for the wholesale purchase, copying, and translation of ancient manuscripts. The influx of exiled Greeks contributed greatly to this project by supplying both texts and translators.

One or more of these transplants could then have brought, in their luggage or in their memory, a Goose Game and translated its rules into Italian. This allows for more than a century in which the so imported game could have become popular in and around Florence, popular enough for Francesco de Medici to use its first documented copy in the 1580s as a prestige royal gift.

Hypothetical as this scenario may be, I submit it as less implausible than the story of a brand new board game starting out ex nihilo with royal endorsements.  It seems unlikely that some freshly invented game would have been chosen for such ceremonial state presents, instead of a well- known traditional staple.

The Goose Game as well as the “Game of Fortune” must have been solidly entrenched to qualify as gifts for those solemn occasions, and there are indeed some indirect hints that this may have been the case.

To begin with, the different names of these games suggest that the Fortune Game, made locally in Austria, was not copied from the Goose Game sent to the court of Spain but derived from an independent and also broadly based transmission.  The spread of the game to there could easily have occurred at any time directly from Greece via the Balkans, an even shorter route than the detour through Florence.

The parallel existence of the same game but with the Snake name further supports this suggestion of separate branches grown from a common root.

6.5.3.2. The Goose Game as Calvary path

Moreover, about a century before those royal endorsements of the Goose Game brought it to the attention of chroniclers, a fashion started in northern Italy to hold processions and pilgrimages along a sacred path or Calvary which represented the passion and death of Christ the celestial king.

The researcher of ancient divination systems Nigel Pennick discussed these Calvaries in his book “Secret Games of the Gods”.  In a chapter on “The Sacred Pathway”, he compared the Game of the Goose with the Egyptian Snake Game as well as with the game of “Snakes and Ladders” which is derived from a traditional game of India and offers a similar mix of advances and setbacks along a path to heaven. Then he wrote :

“[The path on these gameboards] is reminiscent of the Christian tradition of constructing the Stations of the Cross along established mountain pathways, or even whole new pathways, to make Calvary Mountains. Here, small shrines containing images of Christ’s passion are arranged at intervals along a steep pathway, with a chapel containing images of the crucifixion in a chapel at the top. (...)

In many Catholic countries, Calvaries are still used by the devout. They originated in northern Italy, the first being constructed at Varallo in 1491, about a century before the Game of Goose was popularized. When the Game of Goose became popular, it was the era when Calvary construction was in full swing, such as the famous examples at Orta (1583) and Varese (1604).

Perhaps the Game of Goose was a secularization of these Calvaries, using in a new way the popular theme of visiting various stations at which certain events would take place.  In the Game of Goose, some of these stations are hazards, and many Calvary designers introduced deliberately difficult sections, such as steep or precarious pathways.

Of course, to make the via dolorosa of Christ into a board game would have been unthinkable blasphemy in 1600, and would have received the immediate attention of the Inquisition, but the similarity between the Calvary and the Game of Goose must have some connection.”²⁵⁷

This unthinkable blasphemy of making the Passion into a board game disappears if the game- track was not copied from these sacred pathways but the other way around.  If the game represented a pre- existing and well entrenched tradition of life and death and resurrection, as the Disk and its survival suggest, it could have provided the pious inspiration and highly valued model for the Calvaries, just as it appears to have done earlier for the processions on the “sacred way” to Eleusis.