Hundreds of millions of people tune in to the World Cup in the US these days, not knowing that the roots of the ball can be traced to the ancient Egyptian civilisation.
The ancient Egyptians played with balls thousands of years ago, even as the earliest known Egyptian ball, as Egyptologists suggest, was a humble creation.
“It was a tight bundle of straw, chaff or wound yarn, wrapped in two semi-circular leather pieces,” renowned Egyptologist Magdy Shaker told The Gazette.
This ball, he added, was barely the size of a modern baseball, ranging from three to nine centimetres in diameter.
“Yet for the Egyptians of thousands of years ago, it opened a door into games, rituals and communal play,” Shaker noted.
Ball games existed in Egypt as early as the Old Kingdom. They were well established by the Middle Kingdom (2055 – 1650 BC).
Temple and tomb art shows lively scenes of play and competition, reflecting a culture that valued physical activity and gave games social and religious importance.
An ancient scene from the tombs of Beni Hassan shows young girls playing a game similar to handball.
One girl stood on a teammate’s back and threw balls at an opponent. If the opponent failed to catch the ball, she had to get off her partner’s back and move to the ground, making the game a test of balance, agility, and quick reflexes.
Egypt’s early ball-making is also supported in modern football lore.
A FIFA.com article, titled “An invention for all eternity”, explicitly notes: “The very oldest balls still in existence today originated in Egypt two millennia before the Christian era, and were fashioned from wood, leather or papyrus”.
The FIFA piece places Egypt within a wider history of early ball games across cultures, even as scholars stress that ancient Egyptian ball use appears more as play, toys, or ritual and sports-like activities, sometimes resembling hockey or other games, rather than modern association football.
Modern soccer rules were formalised much later in 19th-century England.
Shaker said Egyptian ball sports generally fell into two categories, the first being a recreational form played mostly by women and children. It centred on throwing and catching.
The second resembled early stick-and-ball games. The Beni Hassan tombs also preserve scenes of men striking balls with curved sticks, with players swinging from below using hooked wooden clubs, images that draw parallels with modern golf or field hockey.
That resemblance, Shaker added, is more than visual.
They believe, he said, the Egyptians were among the earliest people to play a form of hockey, using balls made of tightly wound papyrus fibre covered in two coloured leather semicircles.
“But ball games in Egypt were not mere sport,” Shaker said. “They morphed into religious ritual, particularly in ceremonies dedicated to Osiris, god of rebirth.”
The so-called ball-striking ritual was symbolic combat: the king, representing divine order, would strike balls to destroy the enemies of Osiris.
“One famous depiction shows Pharaoh Thutmose III before the goddess Hathor, grasping a ball in one hand and an olive-wood club in the other,” Shaker said.
“Two priests stand nearby, handing him additional balls to hurl and strike,” he added.
Archaeology has also offered hints of organised play. In the late 19th century, British archaeologist Flinders Petrie uncovered a 5,000-year-old child’s burial in Naqada, in Upper Egypt.
The grave held small wooden goal-like frames and five balls, suggesting not only that ball games were played, but that they followed rules and used equipment.
Another clue comes from the ancient Greek historian Herodotus who visited Egypt in 460 BC.
In accounts later incorporated into the Description de l’Égypte, he describes Egyptian children playing ball on a field marked with longitudinal and latitudinal lines, layout that suggests intentional zoning and perhaps even early forms of gameplay strategy.
