Senet
Encyclopedia
Board game
A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve...
from predynastic
Predynastic Egypt
The Prehistory of Egypt spans the period of earliest human settlement to the beginning of the Early Dynastic Period of Egypt in ca. 3100 BC, starting with King Menes/Narmer....
and ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...
. The oldest hieroglyph representing a Senet game dates to around 3100 BC. The full name of the game in Egyptian
Egyptian language
Egyptian is the oldest known indigenous language of Egypt and a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Written records of the Egyptian language have been dated from about 3400 BC, making it one of the oldest recorded languages known. Egyptian was spoken until the late 17th century AD in the...
was zn.t n.t ḥˁb meaning the "game of passing."
History
Senet is one of the oldest known board games in the world. It has been found in PredynasticPredynastic Egypt
The Prehistory of Egypt spans the period of earliest human settlement to the beginning of the Early Dynastic Period of Egypt in ca. 3100 BC, starting with King Menes/Narmer....
and First Dynasty
First dynasty of Egypt
The first dynasty of Ancient Egypt is often combined with the Dynasty II under the group title, Early Dynastic Period of Egypt...
burials of Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
, circa 3500 BC and 3100 BC respectively. It was one of the most popular games of Egypt. Senet is also featured in a painting from the tomb of Merknera (3300
33rd century BC
-Events:* Major climate shift possibly due to shift in solar activity. Glaciers expand, covering plants. Atmospheric temperatures fall.* Sahara changes from a habitable region into a barren desert....
–2700 BC
27th century BC
The 27th century BC is a century which lasted from the year 2700 BC to 2601 BC.-Events:*2900 BC – 2334 BC: Mesopotamian wars of the Early Dynastic period.*2775 BC – 2650 BC: Second Dynasty wars in Egypt....
) (see external links below). Another painting of this ancient game is from the Third Dynasty tomb of Hesy
Hesy-Ra
Hesy-Ra was an official, physician and scribe who lived during the Third dynasty of Egypt, served under the pharaoh Djoser, and was buried in an elaborate tomb at Saqqara...
(c. 2686
27th century BC
The 27th century BC is a century which lasted from the year 2700 BC to 2601 BC.-Events:*2900 BC – 2334 BC: Mesopotamian wars of the Early Dynastic period.*2775 BC – 2650 BC: Second Dynasty wars in Egypt....
–2613 BC
27th century BC
The 27th century BC is a century which lasted from the year 2700 BC to 2601 BC.-Events:*2900 BC – 2334 BC: Mesopotamian wars of the Early Dynastic period.*2775 BC – 2650 BC: Second Dynasty wars in Egypt....
). It is also depicted in a painting in the tomb of Rashepes (c. 2500 BC).
By the time of the New Kingdom
New Kingdom
The New Kingdom of Egypt, also referred to as the Egyptian Empire is the period in ancient Egyptian history between the 16th century BC and the 11th century BC, covering the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Dynasties of Egypt....
in Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
(1567–1085 BC
1080s BC
The 1080s BC witnessed the early years of the Iron Age. Many of the great powers of the High Bronze Age in the Western Mediterranean had either collapsed or been severely weakened...
), it had become a kind of talisman for the journey of the dead. Because of the element of luck in the game and the Egyptian belief in determinism, it was believed that a successful player was under the protection of the major gods of the national pantheon: Ra
Ra
Ra is the ancient Egyptian sun god. By the Fifth Dynasty he had become a major deity in ancient Egyptian religion, identified primarily with the mid-day sun...
, Thoth
Thoth
Thoth was considered one of the more important deities of the Egyptian pantheon. In art, he was often depicted as a man with the head of an ibis or a baboon, animals sacred to him. His feminine counterpart was Seshat...
, and sometimes Osiris
Osiris
Osiris is an Egyptian god, usually identified as the god of the afterlife, the underworld and the dead. He is classically depicted as a green-skinned man with a pharaoh's beard, partially mummy-wrapped at the legs, wearing a distinctive crown with two large ostrich feathers at either side, and...
. Consequently, Senet boards were often placed in the grave alongside other useful objects for the dangerous journey through the afterlife and the game is referred to in Chapter XVII of the Book of the Dead
Book of the Dead
The Book of the Dead is the modern name of an ancient Egyptian funerary text, used from the beginning of the New Kingdom to around 50 BC. The original Egyptian name for the text, transliterated rw nw prt m hrw is translated as "Book of Coming Forth by Day". Another translation would be "Book of...
. The game was also adopted in the Levant
Levant
The Levant or ) is the geographic region and culture zone of the "eastern Mediterranean littoral between Anatolia and Egypt" . The Levant includes most of modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and sometimes parts of Turkey and Iraq, and corresponds roughly to the...
and as far as Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
and Crete
Crete
Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece while retaining its own local cultural traits...
but with apparently less religious significance.
Gameplay
The Senet gameboard is a grid of thirty squares, arranged in three rows of ten. A senet game has two sets of pawns (at least five of each and, in some sets, more). The actual rules of the game are a topic of some debate, although historians have made educated guesses. Senet historians Timothy Kendall and R.C. Bell have each proposed their own sets of rules to play the game. These rules have been adopted by different companies which make Senet sets for sale today.In modern culture
The game is played in the TV show LostLost (TV series)
Lost is an American television series that originally aired on ABC from September 22, 2004 to May 23, 2010, consisting of six seasons. Lost is a drama series that follows the survivors of the crash of a commercial passenger jet flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, on a mysterious tropical island...
in the episode Across the Sea. In Rick Riordan's The Throne of Fire
The Throne of Fire
The Throne of Fire is a 2011 fantasy adventure novel based on Egyptian mythology written by Rick Riordan. It is the second novel in The Kane Chronicles series, which tells of the adventures of modern day fourteen-year-old Carter Kane and his thirteen-year-old sister Sadie Kane, as they discover...
, Carter and Sadie Kane and Bes
Bes
Bes was an Egyptian deity worshipped in the later periods of dynastic history as a protector of households and in particular mothers and children. In time he would be regarded as the defender of everything good and the enemy of all that is bad...
play Senet against the moon god Khonsu. At the beginning of the film Sleuth Andrew Wyke mentions how he is trying to learn the complicated rules of Senet.
See also
- MehenMehen (game)Mehen is a board game that was played in ancient Egypt. The game was named in reference to Mehen, a serpent god protecting Ra during his night-time underworld journey. Nothing else is known about it than that paintings and equipment found suggest that it is a game.-History of the game:Evidence of...
, another ancient Egyptian game - Royal Game of UrRoyal Game of UrThe Royal Game of Ur, also known as the Game of Twenty Squares, refers to two game boards found in the Royal Tombs of Ur in Iraq by Sir Leonard Woolley in the 1920s. The two boards date from the First Dynasty of Ur, before 2600 BC, thus making the Royal Game of Ur probably the oldest set of board...
, an ancient Mesopotamian game - TâbTâbTâb is the Egyptian name of a running-fight board game played in several Arab countries, or a family of similar board games played in Northern Africa and South-western Asia, from Persia to West Africa and from Turkey to Somalia, where a variant called deleb is played.The tâb game is played by two...
, a Middle Eastern game with a similar board - PatolliPatolliPatolli or patole is one of the oldest games in America. It was very much a game of commoners and nobles alike and it was reported by the conquistadors that Montezuma often enjoyed watching his nobles play the game at court.-History:Patolli was played by a wide range of pre-Columbian...
External links
- Senet at BoardGameGeek.Com
- Speculation on what the rules were at BoardGameGeek.Com—"I think experienced game-players can make some reasonable judgments about what the rules probably were. I'm not sure that many Egyptologists have also been game-players, and some of their suggested rules don't seem to make sense . . "
- Egyptians games
- Informative article on Senet