brief history
Patterns of lines forming a grid of more or less tirty squares have been identified as far as the
Neolithic and the archaic period
in places such as Egypt, Jordan and maybe Crete.
The interpretation of those design wasn't easy since they were almost always found on their own
without any accessories showing doubtless evidences of their use as board games.
Some of them were interpreted as calendar until some recent findings,
combining the circular design of Mehen and the clear pattern of the three parallel lines,
were studied extensively by stuart Swiny in Crete.
Eventhough those examples are more recent than some found in Egypt, they attest the wide diffusion of this pattern,
alongside with the simplicity of the design.
Once again, this game shows clear sign of a thight relationship with the holy world
since the beginning of its history with a couple of old boards found in prestigious archaic grave context.
The oldest known representation of Senet is in a painting from the tomb of Hesy (Third Dynasty circa 2686-2613 BC).
This relationship will dramatically increase at the time of the New Kingdom in Egypt (1567-1085),
where it became a kind of talisman for the journey of the dead.
Because of its relationship to luck and the lack of a concept of random in the egyptian mentality
it was believed that a successful player was under the protection of the major gods
of the national pantheon : Re, the sun god travelling every night in the underworld to carry the dead to their final destination.
Thot, the moon god associated with justice and divination and sometimes Osiris the resurected god with ubiquitous powers. Inconsequence, the board usually displayed in the grave alongside other useful object for the dangerous journey towards the afterworld, the seventeeth chapter of the Book of th Dead was concidered to act as a spelling charm to win its way to heaven.
The game was also adopted in Palestine, in the Levant and as far as Cyprus or Crete but with apparently less religious significance.
principle
Despite their occasional association as the two sides of a same game box and their common features such as the use of random generators
to move the five or seven pieces across the board,
the game of senet seem to have been quite different from the game of Twenty squares.
The first difference is the starting position : the all pattern of squares was common to the two players which pieces were probably set up on the board alternatively on the first fourteenth squares of the playground.
The strategy involved in the game was probalby high, combining blocking tactics with racing movements.
However, the element of luck seems to have played a rather important part in the game,
especially on the numerous egyptian boards bearing special design on the last five squares.
The fifth one before the end seems to have constituted some kind of safe place,
the one after could have been a trap forcing a player landing on it to go back to the beginning,
according to the representations linked with the water element and even sometimes with the Nil river itself,
whereas the last three were probably intended to force the players to do the exact moves from those squares
in order to bear off their pieces.
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