Play Senet — Ancient Egypt's Game
The 5,000-year-old Egyptian game of passing — Tutankhamun was buried with four boards. Throw the sticks, race five pawns down the snaking path, swap with enemy pawns, and don't fall into the House of Water.
What is Senet?
Senet — the "game of passing" — is ancient Egypt's national board game and a strong contender for the oldest board game ever found. Boards appear in Egyptian burials from about 3100 BC, and for the next three thousand years everyone from labourers to pharaohs played it: Queen Nefertari is painted playing Senet in her tomb, and Tutankhamun was buried with four boards, one of ebony and ivory fine enough for a king's afterlife luggage. The board is a grid of thirty squares walked in a boustrophedon — snaking — path: left to right, then right to left, then left to right again, like oxen ploughing a field.
Over those centuries the game grew a second life as a religious symbol. New Kingdom Egyptians read the path of thirty squares as the soul's journey through the underworld, with the flooded House of Water as its final hazard, and the Book of the Dead lists Senet among the pleasures of the justified soul. No ancient rulebook survives — this version, like all modern Senet, follows the standard scholarly reconstruction (based on Timothy Kendall's work): throwing sticks for movement, swaps with lone enemies, protected pairs, blocking walls of three, and an exact throw to bear each pawn off the board's end.
How to Play
Senet Tips & Strategy
The reconstruction plays like a knife-fight version of backgammon: fewer pawns, nastier squares. These habits win games.
Travel in pairs
A lone pawn is an invitation — any enemy landing on it swaps forward and throws you back. Two adjacent pawns are untouchable, so advance in leapfrogging pairs and break formation only for the final run at the exit.
Respect the House of Water
Square 27 undoes twelve squares of progress in one splash. Count your throws when approaching squares 22–26: if a throw could dump you on 27, prefer moving a different pawn. The safe House of Beauty at 26 is the ideal staging square.
Chain the bonus throws
Throws of 1, 4 and 5 grant another throw, so a lucky chain can move three or four times in a turn. Spend chains on repositioning pairs and slipping past enemy walls — mobility is worth more than raw distance.
Build walls where it hurts
Three pawns in a row block enemy movement entirely. Even a temporary wall across rows two and three can strand the computer's pawns behind it for several turns while your rearguard catches up.
Senet and the Royal Game of Ur
Senet's great contemporary rival was Mesopotamia's Royal Game of Ur, and the two make a fascinating pair: both are race games older than almost everything else humans still play, both use binary chance (throwing sticks in Egypt, pyramid dice in Ur), and both mix luck with genuinely consequential choices. Egyptian boards were often double-sided — Senet's thirty squares on one face, the twenty-square game from Ur on the back — history's first game bundle. Trade between the two civilisations carried the games along with everything else.
Playing them back to back shows how differently the same ingredients can cook. Ur is a sprint — captures send pawns all the way home and rosettes chain extra rolls into sudden bursts. Senet is a grind of position: swaps rather than captures, protection by formation, and a single catastrophic square that turns the last stretch into a held breath. If the ancient family appeals, Backgammon is their direct descendant by way of the Roman game tabula, and Mancala carries a comparable pedigree from Africa.
FAQ
Is Senet free to play?
Yes — Senet on vygam is completely free. You play against the computer in your browser with no download and no sign-up.
How old is Senet?
Around 5,000 years. Senet boards appear in Egypt by about 3100 BC and the game was played for over three thousand years — Tutankhamun was buried with four boards, and tomb paintings show players facing invisible opponents from the afterlife. It is a strong contender for the oldest board game ever found.
How do you play Senet?
Each player races five pawns along a snaking path of 30 squares and bears them off the end; the first to remove all five wins. Four throwing sticks give moves of 1 to 5. Landing on a lone enemy pawn swaps places with it, a pair of adjacent enemy pawns is protected, and three in a row form a wall that cannot be passed.
What are the special squares?
The final five squares carry the famous hieroglyph houses. The House of Beauty (26) and the last three squares are safe from swaps. The House of Water (27) is the trap: any pawn landing there is washed back to the House of Rebirth (15). Pawns bear off the board only by an exact throw past square 30.
What do the throwing sticks do?
Senet used four flat sticks, one side plain and one marked, thrown together. The number of marked sides facing up gives a move of 1 to 4, and all plain sides up counts as 5. Throws of 1, 4 and 5 also grant an extra throw — chaining bonuses is a large part of the game.
Are these the original rules?
No complete ancient rulebook survives, so all modern Senet is a reconstruction. This version follows the widely used scholarly reconstruction based on Timothy Kendall's work: swaps, protected pairs, blocking walls, the safe and hazard houses, and exact bearing off. It is faithful to the evidence, but the Egyptians never wrote their rules down for us.
Why was Senet found in tombs?
Because the game became a religious symbol. By the New Kingdom, Senet's journey of 30 squares was read as the soul's passage through the underworld — the House of Water as its final hazard — and boards were buried with the dead as equipment for that journey. The Book of the Dead even includes playing Senet among the afterlife's activities.