The ancient game Senet has become the go-to game at the WLBOTT barracks. The game over 4,500 years old.
Senet or senat (Ancient Egyptian: 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. 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. However, the game fell out of use following the Roman period, and its original rules are the subject of conjecture. […] At least by the New Kingdom in Egypt (1550–1077 BCE), the game reflected the concept of the ka passing through the duat—represented in the game by the spaces connecting the individual to different stages of their lives. 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.
A fancy Senet board is available from Vermilion ($88 USD).
Religious Significance Senet boards have been found in ancient Egyptian burial sites, including the tomb of Tutankhamun. The evolution of senet from a secular pastime to a representation of cosmic beliefs underscores the ancient Egyptians’ tendency to infuse everyday activities with deeper spiritual meanings and their intricate beliefs about death, the afterlife, and the interplay between the mortal realm and the divine.
An interesting story about games of ancient Egypt, and the universal nature of game playing, by Prof. Margaret Maitland on The Eloquent Peasant.
One of the things I love most about studying ancient Egypt is that although mummies and pyramids make the Egyptians seem exotic, the more you learn about them, the more that you see that they were just ordinary people with more similarities to us today than you might imagine. There are certain basic, innate human impulses shared by all of humanity- and gaming is one of them. Although games have often been viewed rather dismissively in scholarship, their importance to society and culture is undeniable. In fact, humanity created games long before other more “practical“ ancient inventions such as pottery, writing, or the wheel!
Games, like life, combine both skill and chance, and they embody a number of primal human preoccupations: survival, competition, the battle, the hunt, the race, social organisation, and counting.
Senet The game called Senet, which means “passing“, was the most popular game in Egypt. It was played for over 3000 years (from the First Dynasty around 3000BCE until the 1st century CE) and a possible derivation of the game survived into 19th century Egypt in the form of the game known as al-tab al-sigah. Senet is also comparable to backgammon in game play. Although there is no recorded set of rules for the game, examination of the 120 examples of game boards that survive, the many representations of the game being played, and various texts that describe it being played, has allowed the reconstruction of the game play.
Half-cylinder sticks are dropped to create a random pattern. One side of the stick is curved, the other is flat. This slightly skews the randomness of the results, causing certain combinations to appear more often. In general, the sticks tend to favor flat side up.
From a plethora of tosses with 4 sticks, UC#2 calculated
Point Value
Frequency
1
25 %
2
37.5 %
3
25 %
4
6.25 %
6
6.25 %
The test team, wearing appropriate safety equipment and respirators, ran a series of tests in groups of 5 sticks, to determine if there was a difference between dropping the sticks vertically, or tossing them (with a slight arc) horizontally.
