Senet or senat ( egy, znt, translation=passing; cf.
Coptic
Coptic may refer to:
Afro-Asia
* Copts, an ethnoreligious group mainly in the area of modern Egypt but also in Sudan and Libya
* Coptic language, a Northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century
* Coptic alphabet ...
ⲥⲓⲛⲉ /sinə/ "passing, afternoon") is a
board game
Board games are tabletop games that typically use . These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board (playing surface) and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well.
Many board games feature a comp ...
from
ancient Egypt. The earliest representation of senet is dated to E from the
Mastaba of Hesy-Re
The Mastaba of Hesy-re is an ancient Egyptian tomb complex in the great necropolis of Saqqara in Egypt. It is the final resting place of the high official Hesy-re, who served in office during the Third Dynasty under King Djoser (Netjerikhet). Hi ...
,
while similar boards and hieroglyphic signs are found even earlier.
The game fell out of use following the
Roman period
The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Roman Republic, Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings aro ...
,
and its original rules are the subject of conjecture.
History
Fragmentary boards that could be senet have been found in
First Dynasty burials in Egypt,
E. The first unequivocal painting of this ancient game is from the
Third Dynasty
The Third Dynasty of ancient Egypt (Dynasty III) is the first dynasty of the Old Kingdom. Other dynasties of the Old Kingdom include the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth. The capital during the period of the Old Kingdom was at Memphis.
Overview
Af ...
tomb of
Hesy (c. 2686–2613 BCE). 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 (c. 2500 BCE).
The oldest intact senet boards date to the
Middle Kingdom, but graffiti on
Fifth and
Sixth Dynasty
The Sixth Dynasty of ancient Egypt (notated Dynasty VI), along with the Third, Fourth and Fifth Dynasty, constitutes the Old Kingdom of Dynastic Egypt.
Pharaohs
Known pharaohs of the Sixth Dynasty are listed in the table below. Manetho acc ...
monuments could date as early as the
Old Kingdom
In ancient Egyptian history, the Old Kingdom is the period spanning c. 2700–2200 BC. It is also known as the "Age of the Pyramids" or the "Age of the Pyramid Builders", as it encompasses the reigns of the great pyramid-builders of the Fourth ...
.
At least by the time of the
New Kingdom
New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created.
New or NEW may refer to:
Music
* New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz
Albums and EPs
* ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013
* ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, ...
in Egypt (1550–1077 BCE), senet was conceived as a representation of the journey of the ''
ka'' (the vital spark) 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
The ''Book of the Dead'' ( egy, 𓂋𓏤𓈒𓈒𓈒𓏌𓏤𓉐𓂋𓏏𓂻𓅓𓉔𓂋𓅱𓇳𓏤, ''rw n(y)w prt m hrw(w)'') is an ancient Egyptian funerary text generally written on papyrus and used from the beginning of the New Kingdom ...
''. A study on a senet board in the
Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum
The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum (REM) is devoted to ancient Egypt, located at Rosicrucian Park in the Rose Garden neighborhood of San Jose, California, United States.
It was founded by the Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC). The Rosicr ...
, dating back to the early
New Kingdom of Egypt
The New Kingdom, also referred to as the Egyptian Empire, is the period in ancient Egyptian history between the sixteenth century BC and the eleventh century BC, covering the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth dynasties of Egypt. Radioca ...
, showed the evolution of the game from its secular origins into a more religious artefact.
Senet also was played by people in neighbouring cultures, and it probably came to those places through trade relationships between Egyptians and local peoples.
It has been found in the
Levant
The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is eq ...
at sites such as
Arad and
Byblos
Byblos ( ; gr, Βύβλος), also known as Jbeil or Jubayl ( ar, جُبَيْل, Jubayl, locally ; phn, 𐤂𐤁𐤋, , probably ), is a city in the Keserwan-Jbeil Governorate of Lebanon. It is believed to have been first occupied between 880 ...
, as well as in
Cyprus
Cyprus ; tr, Kıbrıs (), officially the Republic of Cyprus,, , lit: Republic of Cyprus is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its continental position is disputed; while it is geo ...
. 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
![Game Box Inscribed for Taia and His Family MET 12](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Game_Box_Inscribed_for_Taia_and_His_Family_MET_12.182.72a_EGDP012976.jpg)
The senet gameboard is a grid of 30 squares, arranged in three rows of ten. A senet board has two sets of pawns (at least five of each). 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. 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
The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in ...
, Denmark,
Espen Aarseth
Espen J. Aarseth (born 1965) is a Norwegian academic specializing in the fields of video game studies and electronic literature. Aarseth completed his doctorate at the University of Bergen. He co-founded the Department of Humanistic Informatics at ...
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
The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 inter ...
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 (or sometimes do not even know) the "official rules". Games historian
Eddie Duggan
Eddie Duggan is a British photographer, film-maker, screenwriter, author and academic games historian.
Photography
Eddie Duggan's photographs of bands on the burgeoning music scene in 1970s London have been published in both the underground and ...
(
University of Suffolk
The University of Suffolk is a public university situated in Suffolk and Norfolk, England. The modern university was established in 2007 as University Campus Suffolk (UCS), the institution was founded as a unique collaboration between the Univer ...
) provides a brief resume of ideas related to the ancient Egyptian game of senet (together with an overview of the so-called "
Royal Game of Ur
The Royal Game of Ur is a two-player strategy race board game of the tables family that was first played in ancient Mesopotamia during the early third millennium BC. The game was popular across the Middle East among people of all social strata a ...
") and a version of rules for play in his teaching notes on ancient games.
See also
*
Hounds and Jackals
Hounds and Jackals or Dogs and Jackals is the modern name given to an ancient Egyptian tables game that is known from several examples of gaming boards and gaming pieces found in excavations. The modern game was discovered by Howard Carter, who ...
– ancient Egyptian board game
*
Mehen
In Egyptian mythology, the name Mehen ( cop, Ⲙⲉϩⲉⲛ), meaning 'coiled one', referred to a mythological snake-god and to a board game.
Snake god
The earliest references to Mehen occur in the Coffin Texts. Mehen is a protective deity who i ...
– another ancient Egyptian game
*
Patolli
Patolli () or patole () is one of the oldest known games in America. It was a game of strategy and luck played by commoners and nobles alike. It was reported by the conquistadors that Moctezuma Xocoyotzin often enjoyed watching his nobles play ...
– a game of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures
*
Royal Game of Ur
The Royal Game of Ur is a two-player strategy race board game of the tables family that was first played in ancient Mesopotamia during the early third millennium BC. The game was popular across the Middle East among people of all social strata a ...
– a Mesopotamian game played 3000 BC
*
Tâb
Tâb is the Egyptian name of a running-fight board game played in several Muslim (mostly Arab) countries, and a family of similar board games played in North Africa (as ''sîg'') and Western Asia, from Iran to West Africa and from Turkey to Som ...
– a Middle Eastern game that is sometimes confused with senet
*
Mancala
The mancala games are a family of two-player turn-based strategy board games played with small stones, beans, or seeds and rows of holes or pits in the earth, a board or other playing surface. The objective is usually to capture all or some ...
- a set of similar games played across East and West Africa
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
Further reading
*
*
*
*
External links
*
* Rules speculation.
**
* Senet compared with the Royal Game of Ur
{{Tables games
History of board games
Ancient Egyptian culture
Traditional board games
African games
Egyptian inventions
Historical tables games