Senet is a board game from ancient Egypt, whose original rules are the subject of conjecture. The oldest hieroglyph resembling a senet game dates to around 3100 BCE. The full name of the game in Egyptian is thought to have been zn.t n.t ḥˁb, meaning the "game of passing".
History
Senet is one of the oldest known board games. Fragmentary boards that could be senet have been found in First Dynasty burials in Egypt, 3100 BCE. A hieroglyph resembling a senet board appears in the tomb of Merknera. The first unequivocal painting of this ancient game is from the Third Dynasty tomb of Hesy. People are depicted playing senet in a painting in the tomb of Rashepes, as well as from other tombs of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties. The oldest intact senet boards date to the Middle Kingdom, but graffiti on Fifth and Sixth Dynasty monuments could date as early as the Old Kingdom. At least by the time of the New Kingdom in Egypt, senet was conceived as a representation of the journey of the ka to the afterlife. This connection is made in the Great Game Text, which appears in a number of papyri, as well as the appearance of markings of religious significance on senet boards themselves. The game is also referred to in chapter XVII of the Book of the Dead. A study on a senet board in the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, dating back to the early New Kingdom of Egypt, showed the evolution of the game from its secular origins into a more religious artifact. Senet also was played by people in neighboring cultures, and it probably came to those places through trade relationships between Egyptians and local peoples. It has been found in the Levant at sites such as Arad and Byblos, as well as in Cyprus. Because of the local practice of making games out of stone, there are more senet games that have been found in Cyprus than have been found in Egypt.
Gameplay
The senet gameboard is a grid of 30 squares, arranged in three rows of ten. A senet board has two sets of pawns. Although details of the original game rules are a subject of some conjecture, senet historians Timothy Kendall and R.C. Bell have made their own reconstructions of the game. These rules are based on snippets of texts that span over a thousand years, over which time gameplay is likely to have changed. Therefore, it is unlikely these rules reflect the exact course of ancient Egyptian gameplay. Their rules have been adopted by sellers of modern senet sets. Scenes found in Old Kingdom tombs, dating 2686–2160 BCE, reveal that Senet was a game of position, strategy, and a bit of luck. In a presentation to the XX Board Games Studies Colloquium at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, Espen Aarseth asked if the game Senet could be said to still exist, given that the rules were unknown. In response, Alexander de Voogt of the American Museum of Natural History pointed out that games did not have a fixed set of rules, but rules varied over time and from place to place. Moreover, many players of games, even today, do not play the "official rules". Games historian Eddie Duggan provides a brief resume of ideas related to the ancient Egyptian game of senet and a version of rules for play in his teaching notes on ancient games.
