Ludus Duodecim Scriptorum

Ludus Duodecim Scriptorum was a board game popular during the time of the Roman Empire, also known as XII Scripta. Boards tend to have sets of twelve horizontal markings with a divider between the sixth and seventh mark.

The number of set of markings vary, but the most commonly found boards have three. The game Tabula is thought to be a variant of this game.

It has been speculated that the game is related to the Egyptian game Senet, however this is doubted by serious historians as with the exception of limited superficial similarities between the appearance of the boards there is no known evidence linking the game. Another factor causing doubt of this link is that the latest known classical Senet board is over half of a millennium older then the earliest known XII Scripta board.

The earliest known mention of the game is in Ovid's Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love) (written between 1 BC and 8 AD).