The Game of Repeating Life
Decay requires change. Stillness lasts forever. The desert is still. Only wind wears down the ageless stone.
In Egypt, stillness lasted. In the dark, below the blowing sand, in the cool musty air of the tomb, the dead lie imagining this is forever, that the cycle will repeat without decay. It lasted three millennia, thirty Dynasties, but the dead know only infinity. They lie below undiscovered, mummified, repeating. With them is a game, the game of Senet that contains their infinity.
You enter the House of 30 Gods, the game of passing, the game of souls who enter the land of the dead, the journey with and to Ra, to and of Repeating Life.
You cast the four rods, one faces up, you may move your piece 1 space.
1. The House of Thoth
You enter the first space, the House of Thoth, god of Scribes who have written the words on each of the 30 squares of the game board. Thoth, the Ibis headed God, is the first to announce the arrival of the dead and to lay out the bark on which the deceased may sail through the Netherworld, upon the waters of creation and destruction, the waters travelled by the Ba.
Your opponent moves, veiled in shadow. He overtakes you on the journey. The world endures but you may not.
You cast the four rods, three face up, you may move your piece 3 spaces.
2. An Unknown House
3. The House of Neith
4. The House of Ma'at
You enter the House of Ma’at, winged force of balance, which floods and drains the Nile, which sustains life and death throughout all of Egypt. Each House on the board is a stop along the journey, but each contains repetition in itself. The journey ends, but it ends with the rise of the sun, and will continue with its setting.
You cast the rods, three face up, you may move your pawn 3 spaces.
Your opponent throws poorly, chance has favored you.
5. An Unknown House
6. An Unknown House
7. The House of Thirty
You enter the House of Thirty, the House of Senet itself, the representation of the game within the game, the game which represents life and death’s journey itself, and which is itself the journey. The Ba, the personal soul, of both the living and the dead, may journey beyond the body, journey with Ra to land below. It knows the world beyond, for it has been there, and will go there again. The journey of Ra, the journey of the Ba, the game of Senet, they are the same and will last forever.
You cast the rods, all face down. A great fortune, you may move 5 spaces, and cast again this turn.
8. The House of Fire
9. The House of the Tie-knot and Djed Pillar
10. The House of the Wadjet
11. The House of Nut
12. The House of Orion
You enter the House of Orion, the constellation that was originally associated with the God Sah but became synonymous with Osiris during the New Kingdom, the period in which the ritualized religious form of Senet was played. Senet likely began as a secular game, similar in nature to other popular Near Eastern board games known to archaeologists, and only very gradually acquired its explicitly religious Egyptian nature. Like Senet, Osiris became most prominent during the New Kingdom, and began to be folded into originally separate Gods and Concepts. Osiris absorbed Sah, absorbed Orion. Orion was associated with Sirius because they rise one after another, and Sirius became Isis, Osiris’s wife who was worshipped throughout the world of Mediterranean Late Antiquity alongside Hercules and Orpheus. Isis and Osiris would last in Egypt until the rise of Christianity. The Egyptians did not know that the stars will die.
You cast the rods, 3 face up. You move three additional spaces.
13. An Unknown House
14. The House of the Sun-Disc, Aten
15. The House of Repeating Life
You enter the House of Rebirth, the House of Repeating Life, the House where the Soul shall return. This center of the board contains the epithet used for all the Dead, those who are repeating their life. The Ba can survive and travel outside the body, but it is not independent, not like a Greek soul, which persists without the material world. The Egyptians did not believe in an incorporeal infinity, all was real as the Sun and his journey. The Ba is only one part of the person, one of many souls, and each day it returns to the Body, to enjoy its life or its grave goods. If mummification should go wrong, or if a tomb is ransacked by enemies, then decay will come and the Ba will not endure. If players are sent back spaces, they will repeat from here. You may take another turn on this space.
You cast. You show one rod facing up, and move 1 space.
16. The House of Netting
You enter the House of Netting, a trap on the river journey of Ra. The Cycle will have no end but it had a beginning, the primordial Gods on the unformed waters of Chaos, change which destroys forever. It was Atun-Ra who rose forth, self-creating, and gave things their shapes. And it is Ra who every night sails upon these waters to defeat the serpent Apep who seeks every night to return the world to its chaos. Every night Ra sails and defeats Apep. But the waters remain, and your Ba may be caught, dissolved in the Chaos from whence it arose.
You lose one turn.
Your opponent advances past the House of Rebirth, and past you towards the end of the journey, and victory over you. His face is beyond sight, but you recognize his presence. Chance may deliver either of you.
You cast the rods and have none facing up, 5 spaces with an additional roll.
16. An Unknown House
17. An Unknown House
18. The House of Tenet-Mehnet
20. The House of Bread
21. The House of Incense
You enter The House of Incense. The preparation for the burial ritual has begun.
You cast a 5 again and advance to the 26th space.
22. An Unknown House
23. The House of Libation
24. An Unknown House
25. An Unknown House
26. The House of Goodness
You enter the House of Goodness, where the endgame begins, the greatest risks which must be passed to end the game and enter the afterlife. This is the House of Mummification, where bodies are sealed from the wind and sand, protected like the hidden tombs they lie in. This is where eternity will be won or lost. You may cast again.
You cast and the rods plink down, showing four facing up. You may advance past three crucial squares to the 30th.
27. The House of Waters
The Waters of Chaos themselves. If a player lands here they are dragged down into death and begin the journey again. But when the opponent wins, play will stop.
28. The House of the Ba
Ba, the soul, who plays this game. The Living may play this game without another human opponent. The dead play Senet with each other and with the Living. It is not just a pastime given as a grave good, Senet boards are carved on the doors and exits of the Tomb. It is a game about the Netherworld, and a passage itself to the Netherworld, for the Ba may return and commune. Roll 3 to win.
29. The House of Horus
Horus, son of Osiris, the Pharaoh, the monarchal government organism which rules Egypt continuously from the earliest recorded history to the time of Caesar. There is more history in those years than after it, and a whole world persisted with these beliefs about the eternity to follow, a divine hierarchy on Earth through all the ages. The Egyptians -- the poor, the nobles, and the Kings themselves -- played Senet for the entirety of that time, but they never spread the game beyond their borders. Despite wars, trade, marriage, and immigration with the Hittites, Canaanites, Israelites, Greeks, Phonecians, Sicilians, and Romans, despite sharing words and festivals with the followers of Baal, Buddha, Yahweh, Zeus, and the Christ who would conquer them, the Egyptians never spread their Gods or their games beyond their fertile valley. Through all the change, Senet lasted. Roll 2 to win.
30. The House of Re-Horakhty
You enter the house of Ra, the sun and sustainer of all. The God who all people hope to join, the great mystical union acted out through the Senet ritual. You need a 1 to win.
Your opponent advances forward, past the stages of mummification, to the final endgame, ready to defeat you and cast you into the waters. If you cannot advance in time, all will be lost.
But he lands in the 27th space, the House of Waters, of Chaos, and is doomed to destruction. You roll the needed 1 and exit the game.
Because of the nature of a human, split into many parts, the Ba of the Dead could play Senet with the Living, but the Ba of the Living too could play. In the Senet ritual the living player may play against his own living Ba. The struggle with one's Ba is between Life and Death, for man may overcome his Ba's will to live and choose instead the greater Life in Death.
What did it mean to win? Here our knowledge stops, and we cannot go back. Senet has not lasted.
In the dark of desert still they sleep, the worthy Dead repeating Life. The Sun still shines on their graves but we do not believe them, it will not last forever. We their descendants have cut their Bas from life, opened the tombs, and brought change. The Sun will decay just as their bodies, withering into nova, devoured by cosmic chaos. The full rules of the game have been lost, and all who knew its truth have not lasted to tell us. We may never know how to play Senet nor what the Houses really mean, nor what the unknown spaces were. We have only slabs of stone with hieroglyphics on the thirty spaces, none complete. Only chance has guided us this far. We have lasted, but we do not know eternity. That world is lost.