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Game board rock carvings in Hong Kong and Macao: reexamining their significance and dating

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Abstract

The present study is divided in two parts: first, it offers a description of the game boards unearthed in Hong Kong and Macao, outlining the significance of the different theories proposed to explain the origin of these rock carvings in the light of the most recent scholarship on their Western counterparts, with which they had been previously compared. Second, it documents newly discovered game board rock carvings in Hong Kong and, through a comparative analysis of the evidence associated to similar carvings in Macao and Europe (archaeological contextualization, common typology and organization, and functionality), offers a tentative dating of eighteenth-nineteenth century. On account of the coincidence in their arrangement and design and the fact that there is no evidence of similar alquerque-like game board clusters outside of Europe in early times –all known examples appearing within a Roman or Christian context or being the result of territorial expansion or trade–, it shall be concluded that these game boards are the result of late contacts between European merchants stationed in Macao and Hong Kong and local tradesmen who may have assimilated and adapted these games to their own local culture, spreading them across the trading routes that connected old villages.

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The author confirms that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article.

Notes

  1. A ninth rock carving was discovered in October, 2018 at Cape Collinson by Cheung Yip Ki 張業基. A possible tenth rock carving in Brick Hill was reported to the author on 2020.

  2. For instance, Chen (2001, 766) only mentions them en passant, dedicating most of the space to Mainland China. In addition, he incorrectly identify them with ‘mask engravings.’.

  3. Personal communication from Teresa C. S. Lo, December 18, 2017.

  4. For instance, Leung (1989) wrongly presents a photo of another rock carving, the so-called ‘pirate map’ or haize shike 海盜石刻 in Tai Miu Wan 大廟灣 (which is likewise wrongly designated as haipan shike 海盤石刻), on top of which the contours of two unrelated game boards have been drawn (!). These contours are supposed to represent the Upper Shek Pik formation, but the lines have been manipulated by the author to resemble two game boards with a couple of carved cupules. Since the enclosed photograph corresponds to a different rock carving, the inaccuracy, deliberate or not, is not evident.

  5. According to the Guangdong Annals 廣東通志 two military compounds were built in 1817 at the foot of Shek Sze Shan 石獅山, a 334 m elevation south of Yuen Shek Dung. The second complex would have been the Tung Chung Fort, which is situated at the foot of Wo Liu Tun 禾寮墩, a mound almost indistinguishable from Shek Sze Shan. Small hills like these were in all likelihood unnamed in ancient times. The date of this second Fort is somewhat controversial, given that a granite slab at the entrance bears the date 1832 (Siu Kwok-kin 1982, 306). Some of the cannons within the compound, which may have been moved thereafter or be part of an earlier construction, are inscribed with earlier dates, such as 1805 (Jiaqing shi nian zheng yue zao 嘉慶拾年正月造) and 1809 (Jiaqing shi si nian ba yue ji ri zhuzao 嘉慶十四年八月吉日鋳造).

  6. See for instance the aerial photograph of the area from the National Collection of Aerial Photography in Edinburgh, dated 1924, ref. nº. PEGASUS/RN/H/0046, frame 11 (https://ncap.org.uk/frame/20-1-2-28-21?pos=0, accessed June 27, 2022).

  7. Description from the Antiquities and Monuments Office, as quoted to me by William Meacham, personal communication, November 4, 2017.

  8. See aerial photographs predating Bard’s testimony in https://www.hkmaps.hk/, Maps 1963.2 and 1982, accessed July 21, 2022.

  9. Although Hong Kong’s archaeological community was unaware of the existence of this rock carving, I came to learn that local media had also reported this and other findings (Leung 1997), none of which seems to have reached academic circles.

  10. Siu Kwok-kin (1989, 33) states that Wing Lung Wai was founded during the Kangxi 康熙 period (1661–1722), but this date corresponds in fact to the outside wall, built by Tang Sui-cheung 鄧瑞長 and Tang Kwok-yin 鄧國賢, descendants of the original founder Tang Siu-kui 鄧紹舉.

  11. I am indebted to Mr. Edison Tse Tze-kei 謝子旗, Department of Earth Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, for all insights and bibliography on this subject.

  12. I will not consider here Mr. Yeung Chun Tong’s pseudolinguistic explanation (Yeung 1995, 509–510), based on Jao Tsung-I’s hypothesis (Jao 1959, 120), for which see Meacham’s skepticism (2009b, 120). Yeung proposes to read these boards as pre-historic representations of the Chinese characters tian 田, ‘field,’ and mi 米, ‘rice,’ whereas face-like patterns in Neolithic rock carvings are said to represent the archaic form of the Chinese characters for ‘thunder’ lei 雷, ‘mother’ mu 母, ‘father’ fu 父, and the Wu-hu 烏滸 Yueh tribes.

  13. Old sources identify the gate of Ptolemy Euergetes (r. 246–222) in front of the Temple of Khonsu with a pylon, for instance Sladen (1910, 216), and it seems possible that these carvings are indeed the Egyptian game boards reported at the southeast balustrade of the Temple of Khonsu, in front of the Ptolemaic gate, by Jacquet-Gordon (2003, 6, Fig. 3). I owe this reference to Dr. Peter J. Brand, personal communication, May 19, 2022. Additionally, these carvings are very similar to those unearthed at Petra, Jordan, and on Sai Island, Sudan, of Arab or Ottoman origin, for which see Crist et al. 2016a, 153, Fig. 7.1.

  14. A nine men’s morris (which differs from a twelve men’s morris by the absence of diagonal lines) has been reported at the Ramesseum, but this is different from the diagrams included in Parker. See Crist et al. 2016a, 144, Fig. 6.9.

  15. Rainer Stadelmann was working on a new volume, to be published by the German Archaeological Institute, on the Mortuary Temple of Seti I, which includes images of these game boards (Dr. Hourig Sourouzian, personal communication, February 14, 2023). Additionally, Dr. Sourouzian, who has been working at Amenhotep III’s Temple of Nekhbet-Hathor, has also confirmed to me the existence of similar game boards in the Wadi Hilal temples at el Kab.

  16. These artefacts are not stowed at the Royal Society of Antiquaries Ireland (Mr. Conleth Manning, personal communication, May 23, 2022), nor were they transferred from there to the National Museum of Ireland (Matt Seaver, personal communication, May 30, 2022).

  17. I owe the exact location to Mr. Conleth Manning, from the Royal Society of Antiquaries Ireland, in personal communication, May 23, 2022. This is confirmed by Scott (1913, 30) and Pearson (1998, 29 and 37), who also provides a sketch of the moat from a map of 1772.

  18. See in particular Hanel (1997, 319–320) for a nine men’s morris board from Xanten, Germany, now at the Museum für Alltagsgeschichte (Brühl, Germany), carved on a tile with the stamp of the Roman Legion XXX with its cognomen ‘Pia Fidelis,’ which was conferred in 193 AD. The game board was carved immediately after this stamp was incised, which led Hanel to believe that these and other examples of Roman game boards were in fact commissioned for the military. This game board can be precisely dated to between 193/195 AD (the earliest date for which there is confirmation of the epithet) and 359/407 AD, when the legion would have either perished defending the city of Amida against the Sassanid Empire in Mesopotamia, or been disbanded following the collapse of the Rhine frontier in their original location.

  19. Pausanias, II 16, 5. For the superiority of Pausanias’s testimony against Strabo (VIII 6, 10), who declares that not a vestige of the city remained at the time, see Frazer 2012, xci.

  20. These sources include Julius Pollux’s Onomasticon (IX 97–98), Hesychius’ Lexicon (s.v. διαγραμμισμός), and Eustathius’ Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem (VI 634).

  21. According to Cheung (2017, B3) a tradition exists that the weiqi board in Hoi Ha was executed by officers from the early years of Emperor Chengzong of Yuan dynasty 元成宗 (r. 1294–1307). The site and the disposition of the boulders, however, seem rather artificial, and drilling holes probably used for explosives or wood poles can still be seen in some of the rocks. Both the village and the nearby kiln date from the beginning of the eighteenth and nineteenth century respectively (Sima 1990, 73–74; Lin and Siu 1985, 222). Photographs of a weiqi game board carved into the steps of an unidentified building in Macao appeared in 2017 in some historical Facebook groups, but no further information was provided.

  22. Personal interviews were conducted by Witney Cheung Kwan-wai and the author in the villages of Hoi Ha (January 1, 2018), Ting Kok (April 2, 2018), and Shui Hau (January 13, 2019) among a sample of ten elderly residents who claimed to have been living in those villages all their lives.

  23. Alfred Lister (1843–1890) arrived Hong Kong in 1865, only five years after the Kowloon Peninsula was ceased through the Treaty of Beijing. Lister’s mention of ‘Northern farmers’ refers to the population of this territory, situated in the north of Hong Kong Island, whereas ‘coolies’ were, in this context, wharf workers who had left their villages to work in the urban areas.

  24. Some politically motivated research has placed a huge group of more than 3.000 rock carvings, found in 1988 in Mount Juci 具茨山, Henan, in the third millennium B.C.. These engravings, some of them featuring game boards, have been called tianshu 天書 or ‘heavenly writing,’ and they are said to encapsulate the secrets of longevity and the achievements in agriculture and military of the Yellow Emperor (Song 2012; Cai and Zhang 2014; Li et al. 2020). These carvings are over 100 km away from the Buddhist Longmen Grottoes 龍門石窟, where similar game boards, either medieval or contemporary, have been found (Shimizu and Miyahara 2002).

  25. Cheng’s xylography, presumably authored by the famous Ming painter Ding Yunpeng 丁雲鵬 (c. 1547–1628) (Yuan 2013, 87), was clearly inspired by Su Hanchen 蘇漢臣 (1101–1163) and his boys-at-play paintings. Compare for instance Cheng 1606, 5.8b with Su’s ‘Children Playing on the Dragon Boat Festival’ 重午嬰戲 (Gugong 1931, 12.2). Cf. a total of sixteen ink cakes with the former imprint in the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, ref. nº. Gu wen 故文70-71, 88, 466, 476–478, 1028–1031, 1583–1584, and 1590, dated 1606–1621.

  26. This interesting German xylography for Francesco Petrarca’s apocryphal De remediis represents two monkeys playing a nine men’s morris behind Mucius Scaevola and Caesar Augustus, who are playing chess and tabula, a precursor of backgammon. The monkeys represent the character of the common people who, not being able to compare themselves against the measurable standards of great figures, surrender to childish and simplistic board games. The representation is based on a passage from Pliny’s Natural History (viii, 215), who mentions trained monkeys who could play draughts. Cf. an illuminated manuscript of the Book of Hours (c. 1320), 55v, Pierpont Morgan Library, acc. nº. MS M.754, which presents two monkeys playing a nine men’s morris and dices, and an engraving entitled ‘Kinderspelen’ or ‘Children’s Games’ by Justus Sadeler (1583–1620) and engraved by Pieter IV van der Borcht (1530–1608), featuring monkeys instead of children, in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, ref. nº. RP-P-1891-A-16316.

  27. Ma (1990, 130) interprets tiao 挑 as eating two enemy pieces by moving a piece between them.

  28. These include the Chinese-language version of Wikipedia (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/十二子直棋, accessed on June 18, 2022) and a number of sites that repeat this information.

  29. For references to the qiandao in the Taishō Tripitaka 大正新脩大藏經 (abbr. T) and the Zokuzokyo 卍續藏 (abbr. X), see Daban niepan jing shu 大般涅槃經疏 14, T.1767:38.122c6; Liangchu qingzhong yi 量處輕重儀 1, T.1895:45.842c19; Fanwang jing pusajie zhu 梵網經菩薩戒注 3, X.691:38.582a10; Zaijia lü yao guangji 在家律要廣集 3, X.1123:60.524a15 and b1. For the liubo game see Shimizu (2014) and Selbitschka (2016).

  30. Tiantai pusajie shu 天台菩薩戒疏 2, T.1812:40.595b5.

  31. See for instance two eighteenth century enameled dishes from Canton with British ships, on display at the Hong Kong Maritime Museum, acc. nº. HKMM2008.0216.0014a and HKMM2006.0141.0001.

  32. Cf. for instance the three-masted Keying 耆英 Chinese junk and the Fujian junks, on display at the Hong Kong Maritime Museum, acc. nº. HKMM2004.0018.0001 and HKMM2004.0009.0001.

  33. Several sixteenth century pendants for baldric belts with this purpose are displayed at the Naval Museum in Madrid, Spain, acc. nº. MNM 7674. I have not examine this pendant personally, but the inscription could be part of the worn out name of a saint, for instance Saint Albert of Trapani.

  34. Afterwards reedited as Juegos Infantiles (1725, 1735, 1751), Benito Macè’s Jòchs d’Infanteça is an ‘auca’ or story in independent vignettes where children are shown executing different tasks or games. Macè’s work is clearly inspired by the printings of Bouzonnet’s Les Jeux et plaisirs de l’enfance, as shown in Duran (1951, 14). For a reproduction of the original work see Gayano Lluch (1942, Fig. 67).

  35. For descriptions of a similar game in northern Italy, Austria and Switzerland see von Hörmann 1894, 250.

  36. The only known exception to this otherwise uniform pattern is an undocumented carbon copy/drawing from Baiyun Mountain 白雲山, in Lushan 魯山, Henan, with an unusual twelve men’s morris with an extra square attached to an alquerque of twelve. The image is reproduced in Xu (2001, 368; cf. Wu and Sebilland 2020, Fig. 5.11) and was provided to the author by a worker from an archaeological excavation. According to Xu’s highly speculative account (2001, 365), this game board dates back to the fourth century BC and was played by the philosopher Mozi 墨子 and the inventor Lu Ban 魯班.

  37. For a comprehensive catalogue of twelve men’s morris in Europe and elsewhere, see the Centro Studi Triplice Cinta’s catalogue in Uberti 2013. Most references to location in the text are, unless otherwise noted, to this catalogue.

  38. With no pretension to being exhaustive, the former include multiple boards in the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin in Wyfordby (United Kingdom), the Acropolis in Athens (Greece), the Vilhena Palace in Malta, the Saint George’s Parish Church in Piran (Slovenia), or the Basilica of Saint John in Ephesus (Turkey), for which see the Centro Studi Triplice Cinta’s catalogue. The author has found similar examples of undocumented game boards carved on various pedestals of the colonnade of the nave of the Old Cathedral of Salamanca and on the cloister’s podium of the Cathedral of Barcelona (Spain).

  39. The alquerque arrived Peru with the conquistadores, and it was soon assimilated into a new game called ‘leonera’ or ‘lion’s cage,’ which also experienced small changes in the configuration of the board (del Solar Meza and Hostning 2007, 305). There are numerous rock representations of the original alquerque of twelve in Peru, identical to Felipe Guamán’s illustration, but also cupules, spirals, and other sepentiform motifs that have been linked to similar engravings in Galicia, Spain (del Solar Meza and Hostning 2007, 303–304).

  40. For instance, the author has located two alquerque of twelve and a third vandalized board on the pedestals of the colonnade of the nave of the Old Cathedral of Salamanca (Spain), which were meant to be played facing the altar yet sheltered by the pillar next to the pedestal and out of the visual range of both the liturgical ministers and the congregation.

  41. See photographs in the National Collection of Aerial Photography in Edinburgh, dated 1924, ref. nº. PEGASUS/RN/H/0028, frame 19A (Luk Keng) and 0029, frames 9A (Wang Shan Keuk), 23B (Tsat Mut Kiu), and 35 (Ting Kok), (https://ncap.org.uk/, accessed June 27, 2022). Tracks are visible in these photographs, but a more clear view is presented in the topographic map of 1928 developed from those photographs, in Hong Kong Leased territory, GSGS 3868, in The National Archives, United Kingdom, acc. nº. FO 925/25283 (Fig. 15).

  42. Identification follows personal reports from hikers to the author who claimed to have seen the game board in the past, although the exact location remains unclear.

  43. The list records the standardized name of Ting Kok village as Ding Kok cyun 定角村 instead of the original Hokkien name Ting Kok 汀角, ‘floodplain cape’ (Iu 2003, 157), and the original name of Tsat Mut Kiu 漆木橋, ‘Painted Wood Bridges,’ in reference to the bridges of both entrances of the village (Jiezi 1989). An earlier mention of Ting Kok from 1684, written with a heterography as Ding Kok 錠角, also appears in Du (1983, 2.49a).

  44. An examination of the nineteenth century gazetteer Illustrated Affairs of Guangdong Province shows that Luk Keng is an infrequent toponym, with only two locations thus named in the whole province (Guangdong 1993, 10.8a, 22.8b), whereas Shui Hau, a rather common name meaning a curved path around a feng shui wood (Webb 1994, 187), occurs fifty-four times.

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Guarde-Paz, C. Game board rock carvings in Hong Kong and Macao: reexamining their significance and dating. asian archaeol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41826-024-00084-w

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