The ancient Egyptians enjoyed playing board games in their spare time much as people do to this day. Evidence of these board games have been found in Egypt dating back to the Predynastic Period.
Board games are well represented in archaeological material. In Egypt, scenes depicting players exist on tomb walls and papyri. Secular recreational games were included in rituals illustrating the ties between the sacred and the profane. Egypt and the Near East share a number of games that were transmitted through military campaigns and trade relations.
Here we will introduce you to two of the most popular board games: Mehen and Senet.
How to Play Senet
Mehen: The Game of the Serpent God
The Mehen game was played in Egypt from the Predynastic Period until the Middle Kingdom, 5000 to 4000 years ago. Mehen, meaning “the coiled one,” was played during the Egyptian Predynastic Period and the Old Kingdom (ca. 2649-2130 B.C.). Its board depicts a coiled snake divided into squares, which refers to a protective deity who wrapped around the sun god Re during his journey through the night. The spiral imitates the natural posture of the snake protecting its (or her) eggs.
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The game recreates the nightly battle between the god and the enemies of the sun god, Ra. The example below was discovered by the Egypt Exploration Society in 1898 at the site of Diospolis Parva. The best description of the game appears in a picture in the tomb of Hesre at Saqqara (ca. 2700 B.C.) showing gaming pieces associated with a Mehen board: three lions, three lionesses, and six sets of six marbles. In Old Kingdom religious documents known as the Pyramid Texts, inscriptions suggest a belief that attainment of the afterlife was achievable by successfully passing through the Mehen game board. By reaching the center of the spiral, one would symbolically join Re on his barque. Miniature games may have been simulacra among the belongings of the deceased.
The game was played with lion or lioness shaped pieces with three to six sets and small marbles or balls.
Senet: The Game of Passing
Senet was the most popular game played in Ancient Egypt and was played as early as the Third Dynasty over 4600 years ago! Senet or senat (Ancient Egyptian: 𓊃𓈖𓏏𓏠, romanized: znt, lit. 'passing'; cf. Coptic ⲥⲓⲛⲉ /sinə/, 'passing, afternoon') is a board game from ancient Egypt that consists of ten or more pawns on a 30-square playing board. The earliest representation of senet is dated to c. 2620 BCE from the Mastaba of Hesy-Re, while similar boards and hieroglyphic signs are found even earlier, including in the Levant in the Early Bronze Age II period.
But it was not just a game for the ancient Egyptians. It symbolised their personal quest for immortality in the afterlife. In the New Kingdom (ca. 1550-1070 B.C.), Senet, which means “passing,” became associated with the journey to the afterlife. Scenes of Senet-playing are included among the vignettes of chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead and are magnified on the walls of tombs.
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Even though the game has a 2,000-year history in Egypt, there appears to be very little variation in terms of key components. This can be determined by studying the various senet boards that have been found by archaeologists, as well as depictions of senet being played throughout Egyptian history on places like tomb walls and papyrus scrolls. Fragmentary boards that could be senet have been found in First Dynasty burials in Egypt, c. 3100 BCE. The first unequivocal painting of this ancient game is from the Third Dynasty tomb of the high official Hesy (c. 2686-2613 BCE). People are depicted playing senet in a painting in the tomb of the Fifth Dynasty vizier Rashepses as well as from other tombs of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties.
The senet board itself was usually constructed out of wood, ivory, faience, or some combination of these materials, and the layout of the board was a grid of 30 squares, called "houses", arranged in three rows of ten. A complete senet game set would have contained a distinct set of five pawns for each of the two players. At least by the New Kingdom, these pieces were in the form of hounds or dog-headed figurines.
Rules of Senet
Although details of the original game rules are a subject of some conjecture, historians Timothy Kendall and R. C. Bell have made their own reconstructions of the game rules. These rules are based on snippets of texts that span over a thousand years, over which time gameplay is likely to have changed. In Dr. Timothy Kendall's rules, the object of the game is for one player to advance all five of their pawns across the senet board and remove them before the second player does so. The game's length can be extended by increasing the number of pawns allocated to each player as desired, to a maximum of ten pawns per player.
Players take turns and begin by throwing a set of four flat wooden sticks with one side painted white and the other side painted black (or differentiated by some other means), equivalent to two-sided dice. The number of sticks that land on white determines how far a single pawn may advance that turn. One white stick and three black sticks signifies that the player may advance one of their pawns forward by 1 house, two white sticks means the pawn can advance by 2 houses, and so on. The player selects a pawn and places it on the senet board starting at the first house (numbered 1 in the chart on the right), then moves the pawn forward according to the result of the stick roll.
If doing this will result in a pawn coming to rest on a house already occupied by one of their pawns, they must move the newer pawn backward to the first empty house. If the house is occupied by a pawn belonging to the opposing player, then the opponent's pawn can be captured: the player may optionally choose to place their own pawn in the occupied house, then move the opposing player's pawn backward to the first empty house available.
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The four games most commonly found in those regions-Mehen, Senet, Twenty Squares, and Hounds and Jackals, which were sometimes closely associated and played on opposite sides of the same boards-are represented in The Met collection.
Ancient race games are often considered precursors of backgammon, which is traditionally understood to have been invented in Persia in the third or sixth century A.D. In fact, new finds from Jiroft in Iran testify that important characteristics of the backgammon board, such as rows of twelve cells split into groups of six, were already present in the region around 2000 B.C., well before Duodecim Scripta, a Roman game with a similar structure attested in Egypt and Nubia.
House 28, "the House of Three Truths": Any pawn that lands on House 28 cannot be moved to any other house, and capturing is prohibited.
House 29, "the House of Re-Atoum": Any pawn that lands on House 29 cannot be moved to any other house, and capturing is prohibited.
House 30, "the House of Horus": Any pawn that lands on House 30 can still be captured.
| Game | Period |
|---|---|
| Mehen | Egyptian Predynastic Period and the Old Kingdom (ca. 2649-2130 B.C.) |
| Senet | From the Third Dynasty to at least the Late Period (664-332 B.C.) |
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