The History of Nine Men's Morris
Over 3,400 years ago, someone carved three concentric squares into the stone of the temple of Kurna, in Egypt. It was neither a hieroglyph nor a sacred symbol — it was a game board. The same one you're playing on today.
Ancient origins
Nine Men's Morris — known as Jeu du Moulin in France — is one of the oldest strategy games ever discovered. Carved boards have been found in the funerary temple of Seti I at Kurna (circa 1400 BC), on Roman Empire flagstones across Europe, and even in the ruins of ancient Troy.
The Romans called it Ludus Latrunculorum or Terni Lapilli in its simplified variants. The game spread along trade routes — from Roman legionaries to Phoenician merchants, everyone carried their board carved in stone or drawn in sand.
The medieval golden age
The Middle Ages saw the game reach its peak. In Europe, it became the board game par excellence. The Libro de los Juegos (1283), commissioned by Alfonso X of Castile, devotes several pages to it alongside chess and backgammon.
Carved boards have been found in the cathedrals of Canterbury and Westminster, in the cloisters of Gloucester, on castle stone benches. Shakespeare references it in A Midsummer Night's Dream: "The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud" — the board lines drawn in the earth were so common they were part of the landscape.
The game crossed all social classes: kings and peasants, monks and soldiers. Its material simplicity — a board could be drawn anywhere — and its strategic depth made it a universal pastime.
Variants around the world
Over the centuries, the Mill game spawned a family of games adapted to local traditions:
- Three Men's Morris — the simplified 3-piece version, ancestor of tic-tac-toe.
- Six Men's Morris — board with two concentric squares (instead of three), popular in Italy and France.
- Twelve Men's Morris — 12 pieces per player with diagonal placement allowed, more complex and strategic.
- Morabaraba — the South African variant, a national game, with specific rules for flying and mills.
- Mühle — the German name for the game, which led to official federations and championships in Central Europe.
The game in the digital age
In 1993, Ralph Gasser, a researcher at ETH Zurich, solved Nine Men's Morris through exhaustive computation: with perfect play from both sides, the game always ends in a draw. It took 18 years of calculation to explore the 10 billion possible positions.
But a solved game is not a dead game. Like chess after Deep Blue, Nine Men's Morris remains a thrilling challenge between humans. The World Muehle Federation has organized championships since 2004, and the game is experiencing a digital renaissance through online versions.
Playing Nine Men's Morris today means carrying on a tradition that connects pharaohs to knights, cathedral builders to developers — 3,400 years of strategic thinking, carved in stone and now written in code.