As part of our Ancient Egypt unit, we made a Senet board game in our history co-op last week. It was a fun history lesson. That took so long, I didn’t end up doing any of the other activities I had planned, but all of the kids really enjoyed learning about the history behind the game.
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History behind Senet
Senet is a lost game, which means we have the pieces, the board, and paintings of people playing it, but we don’t have the original rules. People have reconstructed the rules from friezes on the wall, and paintings they’ve seen, but since we are reconstructing it, there is no complete agreement on the rules.
It is generally agreed everyone played the game, but the only copies we have left are from the Pharaoh’s tombs we’ve dug up.
Making Senet game pieces
We did this with our history co-op and with lots of siblings, so we decided to let each kid make half a set.
Senet game supplies
4 popsicle sticks, 10 figures to decorate (I chose peg dolls), fabric you can decorate (or just paper) cut to roughly the size of a piece of paper
Another idea, you could make the gameboard on these bags and store the pieces inside the gameboard
Let’s start putting together our game board
First, go through and decorate your pieces for Senet. Color one side of your sticks, and make two teams of 5 figures.
{Side note, since most of the people at our history co-op have siblings, they each made their own team, sticks, and board, that way they have to work together to have a whole game.}
Make a Senet board game
Draw a rectangle on your fabric, and divide it into 30 spaces. Ideally, they’re uniform, but as you can see in mine the spaces don’t HAVE to be perfect to make a Senet board.
For ease of identifying spaces number the squares in an “S” pattern (left to right for 1-10, right to left for 11-20, left to right for 21-30).
- On space 15 draw an ankh.
- On space 26 draw a bird.
- On space 27 draw 3 squiggly lines.
- On space 28 draw 3 dots in a triangle.
- On space 29 draw the Eye of Horus.
How to play Senet
I searched all over the internet, and these are the best instructions I found for Senet. Here’s the incapsulation of what I learned.
Set up your figures in an every other player, starting with player 2 on square 1.
Throw your sticks:
- 4 marked side up- move 5 spaces and throw again
- 3 marked side up- move 3 spaces
- 2 marked side up- move 2 spaces
- 1 marked side up- move 1 space
You can choose to move any of your pieces you want. Here are some handy rules to know:
- Two pieces cannot occupy the same space, so if you move to a space your opponent is on, your opponent will move back to where you were.
- If there are two of your opponent’s pieces in a row, you can not make them move back.
- Some variations say you cannot move beyond 3 of your opponent’s pieces in a row.
What to do with the special spaces in Senet:
- Space 15 (House of Rebirth)- If you land on space 27 you are sent here
- Space 26 (House of Happiness)- every piece must stop here. I saw variations where you had to throw a certain number to leave this space.
- Space 27 (House of Water)- if you land here, you are sent back to the House of Rebirth. If you fail to throw the correct number on space 28 or 29 you are sent here.
- Space 28 (House of Three Truths)- a piece may only leave here if they throw a 3, otherwise you are sent back to House of Water.
- Space 29 (House of the Re-Atoum)- a piece may only leave when they throw a 2, otherwise you are sent back to the House of Water.
How to win Senet
You win Senet when you successfully move all of your pieces off the game by reaching square 30. For a shorter version successfully get 1 piece to square 30.
If you’ve read the The Kane Chronicles
More Ancient History lessons
We’ve studied a lot of Ancient History over the years, and so here are some other ideas to look at if you’re studying this time period.
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