This simple game of chance began as a casual activity at the time of its invention, but Egyptologists suspect that around 2300 BCE, the game took on a religious significance with practitioners believing it offered them a conduit to the dead. Think of it like a competitive Ouija board.
Contemporaneous Egyptian codices reference the game as a reflection of the soul's movement through Duat, the Egyptian plane of the dead. Archaeological evidence appears to confirm this acquired meaning, as boards from about 1300 BCE onward replaced the basic squares of the early senet boards with hieroglyphic birds associated with the Egyptian soul. This symbolism persisted until the game fell out of fashion about 2500 years ago.
The prevalence of religious symbols on younger boards coupled with the density of references to senet in spiritual writings all suggest this evolution was more than a simple aesthetic re-skin featuring images of the occult. For ancient Egyptians, a game of senet was likely an immediate way to experience the progression of the soul on its path to reaching the afterlife.
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