Senet: The World's Oldest Board Game, Older Than the Great Pyramid

Did you know that before humans had Monopoly, chess or the board games we play today, the ancient Egyptians were already playing board games more than 5,000 years ago?

The game is called “Senet” (Senet), the oldest board game for which evidence has been found.

Evidence of Senet can be traced back to about 3100 BCE, more than 5,000 years ago, at the beginning of ancient Egyptian civilisation, even before the Great Pyramid of Giza was built.

The game is not very complicated. A Senet board has 30 squares in total, arranged in 3 rows of 10, with two players competing.

The rules are historians' best guesses from the surviving evidence; the game seems to have been played like a race game.

Players try to move their pieces through the squares to the end, using thrown sticks to decide how many squares to move, much like rolling dice today.

Along the way, players could block their opponent or force them back, and whoever got all their pieces off the board first won.

What is interesting is that the ancient Egyptians also began to link Senet with religious belief, especially about life after death.

The Egyptians believed that when a person died, the soul had to journey through the afterlife, facing obstacles and trials before reaching eternal life.

Senet thus became a board game themed on the journey to the afterlife. The squares on the board were linked to the obstacles the soul had to face: some squares helped you advance, while others might send you back or bring danger, reflecting whether the deceased could overcome the obstacles and enter the afterlife successfully.

This is Monopoly before its time..

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