Senet is one of the oldest board games in the world — Egyptian sets date to ~3500 BCE, well before written rules. Played on a 30-square board (3 rows × 10 columns), each side races pieces from start to bear-off while landing on (or avoiding) the special end-of-board "Houses". The exact rules are partially reconstructed from tomb paintings and scribal references.
Each player has 5 pieces starting on alternating squares of the top row (Amber on 1, 3, 5, 7, 9; Slate on 2, 4, 6, 8, 10). Cast 4 binary throwsticks instead of dice: each painted side counts 1, so a throw scores 1–4, and an all-plain throw scores 6. Throwing a 1, 4, or 6 earns an extra turn. Pieces snake across the three rows — right along the top row, left along the middle, right along the bottom — then bear off the end. Land on an unprotected single enemy piece to swap places with it; a piece is protected when a friendly piece sits on an adjacent square (or it rests on a safe house), and three enemy pieces in a row form a blockade you cannot pass. The special houses near the end matter: the House of Rebirth (square 15) is safe and receives pieces knocked into the water; every piece must stop on the House of Beauty (square 26) before continuing; the House of Water (square 27) sends a piece back to rebirth; and the final squares 28, 29, and 30 require an exact roll of 3, 2, or 1 to bear off. First to bear off all five pieces wins.
Tomb paintings, scribal references, and a 13th-century BCE papyrus describing late-period Senet. The specific values of throwsticks and special-square rules are partial reconstructions; multiple variants exist.
Egyptians believed playing Senet helped the deceased navigate the afterlife — many tombs include Senet boards as funerary equipment. The "Beautiful House" represents passage to the afterlife.
Same family of race games, but Senet runs along a single winding track of 30 squares with special protected "houses" and throwstick rolls instead of dice. Senet predates Backgammon by ~3000 years; modern reconstructions show how the family evolved.
10–15 minutes once the special-square rules are clear.
Senet is the oldest board game we can name — Egyptians were playing it before 3000 BCE, and boards turn up in tombs including Tutankhamun’s. The full ancient rules were lost, but game historians (notably Timothy Kendall and R.C. Bell) reconstructed a playable set from tomb paintings and surviving boards. It is a race: move all your pieces along a 30-square track and off the board before your opponent.
Senet is 30 squares — three rows of ten — travelled in a boustrophedon (“as the ox plows”) S-shape: left-to-right along the top row, right-to-left along the middle, left-to-right along the bottom. Each player starts with five pieces on the first ten squares, interleaved so the two colors alternate.
You throw four two-sided casting sticks (one painted face, one plain). Count the painted faces up:
You must move if you legally can. If no piece can make the throw, you forfeit the turn.
The last five squares carry markings that decide games: