Alea evangelii

Alea evangelii (Game of the Gospels^[1]) is a member of the tafl family of games. Known from an illustration and account in Latin in an eleventh-century Irish manuscript^[1][2][3] where it is given a Christian scriptural context,^[4] the game is played on the intersections of an 18 by 18 squares game board (i.e. a board identical to a standard 19 × 19 grid board for playing Go). This is larger than that of most tafl games.

The manuscript, Corpus Christi College ms. 122 (folio 5 verso), attempts to give scriptural meaning to a hnefatafl variant, and, though the layout is unwieldy, its proportions are also found in a game board fragment unearthed at Wimose on the Danish island of Funen.^[2]