This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, April, 2017
In 1895 (or the 1930s, depending on your source), British Egyptologist Sir Flinders Petrie discovered objects in a child’s grave in Egypt that, to him, represented a crude form of bowling. This suggests the actual invention of bowling dates back to 3200 B.C., when prize funds were fair and squad equity was invariably precise.
You won’t be able to research this assertion much further, as Petrie’s own can’t-be-wrong Wikipedia page doesn’t even mention it, and the 35-year gap in the claim of when he discovered the objects is alarming, but it’s intriguing to consider bowling could have been around 3,500 years prior to its undisputed presence in Germany in 300 A.D. Also of note: Team Europe won the Weber Cup 1,476 years in a row, by forfeit, until, in the course of human events, it became necessary for one people to form a bowling team.
We still refer to bowlers as keglers, in a way always paying homage to the game’s German heritage (“kegler” is German for “bowler”), but can we completely discount Petrie’s theory? Or was Petrie merely consumed by bowling fever, keeping in mind the American Bowling Congress was established in 1895, the exact same year Petrie excavated the child’s grave? Incidentally, other evidence suggests Petrie was the first British ABC member and finished second in All Events that year to Maurice McNiel.
The evidence seems spotty, but could Petrie be right about bowling’s Egyptian origin? Let’s explore.
When you think of Egypt, you might think of Moses, mummies, political unrest or the King Tut episodes of Batman, but it’s time we put bowling first. As bowlers, we lack patience unless we’re talking about when we bowled last, when we’ll bowl next or how we’re bowling right now, but the Ancient Egyptian culture was fascinating in every respect. Still, wouldn’t it be even more engrossing if bowling were involved? That’s why it’s so infuriating the King Tuts from Batman and those 37 Museum movies never once mention their high games or positive axis points.
The history books give the headlines to the romanticized and grade-level appropriate version of Egyptian history, but not even a footnote is given to the schlubs arranging 10 items at the end of a narrow alley, then chucking rocks at those items in an effort to receive a “75 items above average” hieroglyphic.
It was a true shame when the Ancient Egyptian Bowling Congress switched from hieroglyphics to magnets, especially because there were no refrigerators.
Consider the visually stunning and compelling pyramids at Giza. Archaeologists, anthropologists and other ologists have long studied why and how the pyramids were built, and there are some enthralling facts and interesting theories out there, but we’re about to answer the question once and for all: the pyramids are a three-dimensional representation of a rack of bowling pins. That, or they were trying to create a set of 10 pyramids, built in an equilateral triangle and equidistant from each other. Somebody probably complained about the inevitability of a bad rack, so they scrapped the whole idea. With nearly 140 pyramids throughout Egypt, they could’ve built a seven-lane house with a little planning.
Maybe we’re approaching absurdity in an effort to support Petrie’s claims, but when you look at the modern game, maybe we’re not?
Today, we see top bowling stars donning ornate, shiny garb, mummified by kinesiology tape and worshiping inanimate objects as they spend hours upon hours bowling near the Luxor in Las Vegas. Perhaps the Egyptian influence is stronger than even Sir Flinders Petrie thought.