THE HISTORY OF DOMINOES

The invention of dominoes is most often attributed to the Chinese in the 12th-century.  But some attribute their origins to Egypt and Asia from a much earlier time in history.  Probably the earliest known domino set was found in the ancient Egyptian King Tutankhamen's tomb in Thebes.  Tutankhamen reigned in Egypt's 18th dynasty, around 1355 BC, and the set discovered is now on display in an Egyptian museum in Cairo.  The earliest known Chinese set of dominoes has been dated to 1120 AD.  Of course, it is possible that dominoes, like ordinary dice, were developed independently by a number of different cultures all around the world at various different times in mankind's history.

Chinese history relates a number of different accounts of dominoes' invention, so are probably all legend and none can be taken as a definitive and true version of their origin.  According to some Chinese accounts an heroic soldier called Hung Ming (181 - 234 AD) invented them to help keep his soldiers awake during nightwatches when encamped before battle.  Others state that Keung T'ai Kung invented them in the 12th-century.  A Chinese historical account called the Chu sz Yam ("Investigations on the Traditions of All Things") states they were invented by a nobleman who then presented them to the Chinese Emperor Hui Tsung whose son Kao Tsung (1127 - 1160 AD) subsequently had them circulated abroad.  None of these accounts can be considered a credible version of dominoes' origin.

Dominoes didn't appear in the West until the early 18th-century when they were first noted in Italy.  It has been suggested that they arrived in Italy via trading routes from the Far East, but no one knows this for sure.

Michael Dummett wrote a short piece in the history section of his "Game of Tarot" (page 35) dating the introduction of dominos in Europe to Italy, possibly in Venice and Naples, in the 18-th Century . Although domino tiles are clearly of Chinese inheritance, there is a debate over whether the European tile set came from China to Europe in the fourteenth century or was invented independently.

A single domino was found with the Mary Rose wreckage (early 16-th century), but it seems likely to have found its way there much later. On the whole, there is so much evidence for games in the 16-th century and 17-th century that if dominoes existed they woudl not have escaped the record.

European dominoes are rectangles that are twice as long as they are wide. There is a single tile for each combination of the faces of a pair of dice; the blank suit is the throws of a single die, for a total of twenty-eight tiles in the standard Double six set. Other sets with larger numbers of tiles were invented later, with the double nine and Double twelve sets being the most common extensions.

The word "domino" is most likely to be derived from the Latin, dominus (ie. the master of the house). The vocative, domine, became the Scottish and English dominie (ie. schoolmaster). The dative or ablative, domino, became the French and then the English domino. This word first referred to a type of monastic hood, then

to a hooded masquerade costume with a small mask, then to the mask itself, and finally to one of the pieces in the domino set, namely the [1-1] tile.

The game moved from Italy to France in the early 18th Century and became a fad. By the late 18th century, France was also producing domino puzzles. The puzzle were of two types. In the first, you were given a pattern and asked to place tiles on it in such a way that the ends matched. In the second type, you were given a pattern and asked to place tiles based on arithmetic properties of the pips, usually totals of lines of tiles and tile halves. The book CREATIVE PUZZLES OF THE WORLD by van Delft and Botermans has a reproduction of an antique French picture puzzle which is assembled by matching domino tiles on the bottoms of the picture squares from this period.

The game arrived in Britain in the late 18th Century from France (possibly via French prisoners of war) and quickly seems to have become popular in inns and taverns at the time.

The word "Domino" is French for a black and white hood worn by Christian priests in winter which is probably where the name of the game derives from. Domino games are played all over the world, but they are most popular in Latin America.

Inuits (Eskimos, to use an old and incorrect term, for these North American natives) play a game using tiles made from bones that are very similar to Western Dominoes. This game was probably an imitation of Western games rather than a native invention.

Dominoes bear an unmistakeable relationship to standard ordinary spotted dice, and it is thought that whoever invented them took their inspiration from the spotted dice that certainly preceded them.  The resemblance between dominoes and dice is in the unmistakeable spotted values found on both gaming implements with dominoes bearing all the possible combinations of two spotted dice.  The numbering of clay tiles was used by the Babylonians in their business accounting, and they could possibly have been the forerunners of dominoes.  It doesn't take much imagination to see dice used in games being crossed with accounting tiles used for business, to produce dominoes.

Today, dominoes, in one form or another, are played all over the world but are most popular in South American countries and the Caribbean where they are considered to be the national game of many nations.