Senet was the popular ancient Egyptian board game played with moving pieces on a grid. Its board normally contained 30 squares arranged in three rows of ten, and players moved pawns according to throws of casting sticks or similar gaming devices.
The earliest clear depiction of senet dates to the tomb of Hesy-Re in Egypt’s Third Dynasty, around 2620 BCE. Fragmentary boards may be older, and the game continued to appear in tomb paintings, papyri, and elite burials for roughly two thousand years. A senet set was even found in the tomb of Tutankhamun, while paintings show figures such as Queen Nefertari playing it.
Senet began as a secular game but gradually acquired religious meaning. By the New Kingdom, its journey across the board could symbolize the soul’s passage through the underworld, or duat. Chapter 17 of the Egyptian Book of the Dead depicts the deceased playing against an invisible opponent.
The original rules are not known with certainty because the game disappeared during the Roman period. Modern reconstructions exist, but they are scholarly interpretations rather than proven copies of the ancient rules. Hounds and Jackals and Mehen were different Egyptian board games.