Object: Be the first to get all of your men home.
The original game used 4 two-sided sticks. The number of light sides upward indicates the count for movement or the entry place on the board for your pieces. Out of a possible 16 throws, 4 yield a count of 1, 6 yield a count of 2, 4 yield a count of 3, and one each for counts of 4 and 6. (A 6 count was given for a toss of all 4 sticks light-side down).
Your men are safe from capture if placed on any of the first four marked squares, the sixth marked square, the ankh House of Rebirth, and the circle House of Beauty. Beware! The water House of Humiliation (House of Water) sends you back to the off-board start! On other squares, when an opponent lands on a piece, it is sent back to the start.
Only one man at a time may occupy any square.
Senet is an ancient Egyptian game, which dates back at least 4500 years;
a wall-painting showing the game was found in an Egyptian tomb built sometime
before 2600 B.C. No one knows the full rules of the game. This is one possible
version, reconstructed by assumptions made about the board and pieces. These rules are a combination of those from the zillions-of-games development team , those proposed by Professor John Tait, a leading authority on Egypt based at University College London, and those proposed by myself, Douglas Silfen. Senet is a simple race game, which probably spread through ancient Greece and Rome, and to other areas of the Middle East, evolving gradually into other race games like pachisi and backgammon. |
