We’ve all enjoyed playing board games – Timeless ones like Chess and Checkers, and more modern ones like Monopoly and Risk.
So I was in the Israel Museum the other day and saw the game in the photo above. This is Senet, a two player game from ancient Egypt. This particular item is from 15th-13th century BCE – that’s some 3500 years ago.
The Egyptians played this game for two millennia, rather longer than Monopoly has been around. There are no photos of them doing so – they did not have Instagram back then – but they did share images: here is a painting from the tomb of queen Nefertari (1295–1255 BCE) playing this exact game. You can see the two shapes of the pawns, one set for each player, just as in the exemplar from the Israel museum.
And we could play this game, using the ancient board (or a newly made one), except that the rules of the game have been lost, gone with the glorious culture of that fabulous kingdom on the Nile.
I just love these vignettes from the day to day life of long gone peoples!