Catacomb Games: Reused Game Boards or Funerary Inscriptions?

Abstract

Abstract Several marble slabs fashioned like game boards for XII scripta/Alea come from Christian catacombs in Rome. Often deliberately cut or fragmented, they were used as funeral slabs. The general opinion is that these game boards have found a secondary use in the funeral context. The present paper presents a critical discussion of this interpretation. The slabs differ in several details from real game boards. Moreover, the inscriptions often betray a distinctive funeral character. Game boards for this game consist of three rows of two groups of six squares, their structure thus being identical to the poetic form of a hexagram. It appears that in Late Antiquity, the hexagram was particularly popular as a formula for funerary inscriptions. Moreover, the symbolic meaning of the XII scripta/Alea game favoured its use in sepulchral contexts. It seems therefore that at least a certain number, if not most of these “game” boards, were produced as funeral slabs and never used before as game boards in the home of the living.