Backgammon
Backgammon is one of the oldest known board games. Its history can be traced back nearly 5,000 years to archeological discoveries in the Middle East, originally in Iran. It is a two player game where each player has fifteen pieces ("checkers") which move between twenty-four triangles ("points") according to the roll of two dice. The objective of the game is to be first to "bear off", i.e. move all fifteen checkers off the board. Backgammon is a member of the tables family, one of the oldest classes of board games.
Munsterbilzen Abbey
The sentence "Tesi samanunga vvas noble unde scona" ("This monastic community was noble and clean") plays an important role in the history of the Dutch language. The six words were added in 1130 under a list of names in the gospel of Munsterbilzen, a Carolingian manuscript. The gospel of Munsterbilzen also contains an Ordo Stellae (also called Officium Stellae), a three-kings game, which is considered to be the oldest play in the Netherlands. In December 2008, this precious codex threatened to be auctioned at the London auction house Sotheby's. Eventually, after much lobbying, the gospel libraries remained in possession of the Bollandists in Brussels, where it has been around since 1842.