How to Play Senet: The Ancient Egyptian Game

Senet may be the oldest board game humans still know how to play. Fragmentary boards that may be Senet have been found in First Dynasty Egyptian burials from around 3100 BCE, and tomb paintings show Egyptians playing it across more than two millennia. The catch: nobody wrote the rules down, and the game fell out of use during the Roman period. Modern reconstructions of how to play Senet draw on the paintings, the boards themselves, and a few brief textual hints from religious documents — particularly Chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead, where the deceased plays Senet as part of the soul’s journey.

What Senet actually is

The name means roughly “passing” or “the game of passing.” Possible Senet boards appear in burials from around 3100 BCE, the first unmistakable painting of the game comes from the Third Dynasty tomb of the official Hesy (around 2620 BCE), and game boxes were buried with Tutankhamun. By the New Kingdom, Senet had ritual significance — winning was associated with successful passage through the afterlife — and texts and paintings show the deceased playing against an invisible opponent.

By the Roman period the game had largely stopped being played in Egypt. The complete rules were not recorded. Egyptologist Gustave Jéquier proposed the first modern rules in the 20th century; they were later replaced by reconstructions from R.C. Bell and Timothy Kendall (Kendall’s book Passing Through the Netherworld appeared in 1978). What follows is a popular modern version built on that work, with variations noted.

What you need

The board: 30 squares in three rows of ten, read in a serpentine S-pattern. Players enter at square 1 (top-left), move right along row 1 to square 10, then drop down and move left along row 2 from square 11 to square 20, then drop down again and move right along row 3 from square 21 to square 30.

Each player gets 5 pieces (Kendall’s first rules used seven; Bell used ten), distinguished by shape or color. You also need four throwing sticks, each with one side painted or marked and one side blank. Throwing sticks act as the dice.

The throwing sticks

Four sticks, each landing marked-side-up (counted as 1) or blank-side-up (counted as 0). The score for the throw is the count of marked sides showing, plus a special rule for the all-blank case. In Kendall’s reconstruction the all-blank throw is worth 5; many modern sets also add bonus throws, like this:

• 1 marked side up: move 1 square, and throw again.
• 2 marked sides up: move 2 squares. No re-throw.
• 3 marked sides up: move 3 squares. No re-throw.
• 4 marked sides up: move 4 squares, and throw again.
• 0 marked sides (all blanks): move 5 squares, and throw again. (Some modern sets count this as 6.)

The re-throw house rule means that 1s, 4s, and 5s give bonus turns — a strong roll can move you very far in a single pass.

Starting position

In this version, pieces start on the first ten squares in alternating order — player A on square 1, player B on square 2, A on 3, B on 4, and so on through square 10. The five pieces of each player begin already on the board, threading the first row. (In Kendall’s rules, pieces instead enter the board one at a time from square 1.)

The player chosen to go first throws the sticks. There is no canonical rule for choosing — coin flip, oldest first, whoever’s turn it is in real life. Pick something.

Movement

On your turn, throw the sticks and move one of your pieces forward by the indicated number of squares. You move along the serpentine path: right along row 1, left along row 2, right along row 3, and off the end of square 30. You can only move forward, never backward.

You must use your throw if any legal move is available. If no legal move is available — every piece is blocked — your turn is forfeit and the throw is lost. Some versions add penalty rules here, but the common choice is simply to lose the turn.

Blocking and capturing

Only one piece can occupy a square at a time. If you land on an opponent’s piece, the two pieces swap places — your piece takes the square, theirs is sent to the square you came from. This is the “capture” mechanic, though it does not remove the captured piece. (Kendall sends the captured piece back to the first empty square instead; Bell removes it from the board.)

Many modern rule sets add blocking. Two adjacent pieces of the same color form a block: the opponent cannot land on either of those two squares. Three adjacent same-color pieces form an impassable wall: the opponent cannot pass through them at all. This makes the line-formation a major strategic tool.

The named squares

Several squares are decorated on surviving boards: square 15 and squares 26 through 29, with square 30 as the final house. Square 15 (marked with an ankh, often called the House of Rebirth) plays as a normal square but matters for square 27. The late squares have special rules.

Square 26: House of Happiness

Sometimes translated as the House of Beauty. In Kendall’s rules every piece must land on square 26 before it can leave the board — no jumping past it. Many modern versions also treat it as a safe square where a piece cannot be captured. From here, your throw decides which of the final squares you reach.

Square 27: House of Water

A penalty square. Land here and your piece is sent back to square 15 (or in some versions, square 1). If square 15 is occupied, the piece goes to the first empty square before it. This is the most dangerous square on the board, and pieces try to skip past it.

Squares 28, 29, 30: The final three

These represent the final stages of the journey: square 28 is the House of Three Truths, square 29 the House of Re-Atum, and square 30 the House of Horus. In Kendall’s version a piece on these squares needs an exact roll to leave the board: 3 from square 28, 2 from square 29, 1 from square 30. Other reconstructions differ on the details.

Winning

The first player to bear all five pieces off the end of the board wins. In the ritual interpretation, those pieces have successfully passed into the afterlife. In the casual interpretation, you have won.

Strategy basics

Watch the late-board squares. The penalty square 27 is the single biggest hazard, and the entire endgame is about navigating the named squares without getting bounced back. A piece that lands on 27 can lose 10+ squares of progress in one turn.

Form blocks early. Two-piece blocks in row 1 or row 2 control whole columns of the board and force your opponent into the dangerous outer lanes. Three-piece walls are even better but rare to build before pieces start advancing.

If you play with bonus throws, the 1s, 4s and 5s are precious. A player who gets a sequence of 1s or 4s in a single turn can run a piece deep into the late board very quickly. Bank those bonuses on pieces that are already past the dangerous middle.

Why Senet matters historically

Senet is one of the earliest board games for which we have physical evidence, with possible boards going back to Egypt’s First Dynasty. Its appearance in royal tombs, its mention in the Book of the Dead, and the consistent 30-square layout across thousands of years suggest it was both an everyday pastime and a sacred object. The Wikipedia article on Senet covers the archaeological evidence in more detail. Museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum hold Senet boards and game boxes, and the British Museum has a papyrus showing a lion and a gazelle playing the game.

Where to play Senet today

Several free reconstructions exist as web games and phone apps. Boards are also easy to make at home — a 3×10 grid drawn on paper, five tokens per side, and four flat sticks or four coins for throws. The rules variations make it worth picking one reconstruction and sticking with it for a game; Kendall’s version is the most cited. If you enjoy race games with blocking and bumping, Backgammon scratches a similar itch in your browser. For a quicker browser break between rounds, the Chrome Dino game is the closest modern equivalent to “30 seconds of low-stakes timing fun.” Senet is the long-form sit-down version.

Frequently asked questions

How old is Senet?

Fragmentary boards that may be Senet date to roughly 3100 BCE, from Egypt’s First Dynasty burials, and the first unmistakable depiction is from around 2620 BCE. The game was played for well over two thousand years before fading from use during the Roman period.

Are there written rules for Senet?

No complete rules were recorded by the ancient Egyptians. Modern reconstructions are built from tomb paintings, the boards themselves, and brief references in religious texts (especially the Book of the Dead). The most cited modern reconstructions are Timothy Kendall’s and R.C. Bell’s.

How many pieces in Senet?

Most modern rules give each player 5 pieces, for a total of 10 on the board; a complete ancient set also had five pieces per player. Some reconstructions use seven or ten each. The board has 30 squares arranged in three rows of ten.

Is Senet a game of luck or skill?

Both. The throwing sticks introduce randomness, but choosing which piece to move, the capture and block rules, and the named squares give skilled players an edge. A good player will win more often against a casual player even though no roll is fully controllable.

What does Senet mean?

Roughly “passing” or “the game of passing.” The name refers both to the literal movement of pieces along the board and to the spiritual interpretation of the game as a journey through the afterlife. The Egyptians used Senet imagery in funeral contexts for that reason.

The bottom line

Senet is a roughly 5,000-year-old race game with elegant mechanics: a serpentine path, throwing sticks, blocks and captures, and a few dangerous named squares that turn the late board into the real challenge. The rules we use today are a reconstruction, but the boards we have are real, and the 30-square layout stays recognizable from the earliest dynasties to the New Kingdom. Set one up, throw four sticks, and play the oldest game we still know how to play.

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