Egyptian board game ideas

Participants threw dotted stones or beans to determine how their pieces would move over a cross-shaped board. Gambling was usually involved. Marbles may have also been involved.

A staple in ancient Greece, Petteia parables proved irresistible to many great thinkers. This one is still very much alive and kicking. Go likely originated in China between and years ago Confucius himself even wrote of it.

Unfortunately, the instruction manual is nowhere to be found, and nobody knows exactly how it was played. First, measure your board to allow for three rows of ten squares and then pencil the lines in.

If you are using balsa wood to define the spaces, make sure to add space for the balsa. You know what I mean. Because we needed enough balsa for 4 boards, Grampy pitched in and found a clever way to cut a lot of strips at once.

Thank you, Grampy. Put the two long strips on first. Then you can put the smaller strips on the board between them. This is when you may need to trim see above. Once the wood glue has dried, you can begin to paint the board. You may need to put something heavy on the strips of wood to help hold them down while they dry. There is no right or wrong way to paint the squares. As you will see, each of the boys had their own vision of what the Senet board should look like.

Once the paint has dried, you can draw the numbers and the required symbols on the board. We used carbon paper to copy the symbols and magic markers to draw them in. Easier and quicker than paint. Once you have finished your game board with the Eye of Horus facing the right way , you need to make some pawns for the game. You will need five pawns for each player. The pawns need to be different shapes I found the wood shapes at Michaels , or they need to be painted different colors. We left our shapes natural.

You could also use checkers if you want. Instead of dice, Senet uses gaming sticks. In the day, they sometimes used knucklebones called astragali. You throw the sticks and only count the side of the stick that is colored, or decorated. The boys painted one side of popsicle sticks with color patterns and painted the other side white.

When I was making our board, I thought it would be fun to decorate one side of the sticks with Egyptian designs. Probably since Mod was a popular term. You just cut out the designs the attached pdf file and glue them on one side of your popsicle stick with the Mod Podge. Once they have dried, you can trim them with scissors and Mod Podge them again.