Sports

  Egypt Sports were unquestionably common in  ancient Egypt , where pharaohs used their hunting  prowess  and exhibitions of strength and skill in archery to demonstrate their fitness to rule. In such exhibitions, pharaohs such as  Amenhotep II  (ruled 1426–1400  bce ) never competed against anyone else, however, and there is reason to suspect that their extraordinary achievements were scribal fictions. Nonetheless, Egyptians with less claim to divinity wrestled, jumped, and engaged in ball games and stick fights. In paintings found at Beni Hassan, in a tomb dating from the Middle Kingdom (1938–c. 1630  bce ), there are studies of 406 pairs of wrestlers demonstrating their skill. Crete  and  Greece Since Minoan script still baffles scholars, it is uncertain whether images of Cretan boys and girls testing their acrobatic skills against bulls depict sport, religious ritual, or both. That the feats of the Cretans may have been both sport an...

  It is unlikely that the 7th-century Islamic conquest of  North Africa  radically altered the traditional sports of the region. As long as wars were fought with  bow and arrow , archery contests continued to serve as demonstrations of ready prowess. The prophet Muhammad specifically authorized horse races, and geography dictated that men race camels as well as horses. Hunters, too, took their pleasures on horseback. Among the many games of North Africa was  ta kurt om el mahag  (“the ball of the pilgrim’s mother”), a Berber bat-and-ball contest whose configuration bore an uncanny resemblance to baseball.  Koura , more widely played, was similar to football (soccer). Cultural variation among black Africans was far greater than among the Arab peoples of the northern littoral. Ball games were rare, but  wrestling  of one kind or another was  ubiquitous . Wrestling’s forms and functions varied from tribe to tribe. For the  Nuba  o...

No one can say when sports began. Since it is impossible to imagine a time when children did not spontaneously run races or wrestle, it is clear that children have always included sports in their play, but one can only speculate about the emergence of sports as autotelic physical contests for adults.  Hunters  are depicted in prehistoric art, but it cannot be known whether the hunters pursued their prey in a mood of grim necessity or with the joyful abandon of sportsmen. It is certain, however, from the rich literary and iconographic evidence of all ancient civilizations that  hunting  soon became an end in itself—at least for royalty and nobility. Archaeological evidence also indicates that  ball  games were common among ancient peoples as different as the Chinese and the Aztecs. If ball games were contests rather than noncompetitive  ritual  performances, such as the  Japanese  football game  kemari , then they were sports in the ...