Senet

1. The race: Senet is a race for two on a 30-square board. The path snakes: left-to-right across the top row, right-to-left across the middle, left-to-right across the bottom. You play the light cones; the AI plays the dark spools. Each side has 5 pieces.
2. Throw the sticks: throw the four casting sticks — the number of light faces showing is your move (1–4); all dark faces = 5. Throws of 1, 4, and 5 earn another throw.
3. Move: move one piece forward by the thrown value. You can't land on your own piece. Land on a lone enemy piece and you swap places with it.
4. Protection & walls: two enemy pieces side by side are protected — you can't swap with them. Three in a row form a wall your pieces cannot pass.
5. Forced moves: if you can't move forward, you must move a piece backward; if no move exists at all, your turn is forfeit.
6. Special houses: every piece must land exactly on square 26 (House of Beauty) before the final stretch — from there a 5 bears straight off. Square 27 (House of Water) sends a piece back to square 15 (House of Rebirth). Square 28 needs an exact 3 to bear off, square 29 an exact 2, and square 30 escapes on any throw.
7. Winning: first player to bear all five pieces off the board wins.

Full rules guide & cultural history →

Senet is among the oldest known board games on Earth, attested in Egypt from around 3100 BCE — in Predynastic burials — all the way through the Roman period. It was played by everyone: laborers scratched boards into paving stones and rooftops, while pharaohs were buried with exquisite inlaid sets. Tutankhamun's tomb alone contained four Senet boards.

Over the centuries the game took on profound religious meaning, becoming an allegory of the soul's journey through the Duat — the Egyptian afterlife. The final five squares of the board map the soul's trials before judgment, and Chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead shows the deceased playing Senet for their eternal fate. Queen Nefertari's tomb famously depicts her playing against an unseen opponent — perhaps fate itself.

The original rules were never written down. Modern play follows scholarly reconstructions pieced together from tomb paintings, game texts, and surviving boards — this game uses Timothy Kendall's widely adopted reconstruction.