Senet

Just read this article on Eurogamer, it's great:

www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-06-01-wh...me-nobody-else-liked

The whole thing is fascinating, but one thing resonated with me. Made me quite intrigued. It's this bit:

Murkier still, it's possible that the ancient Egyptians had an entirely different understanding of even the most basic elements of Senet. John Tait is the emeritus professor of Egyptology at UCL, and he's spent a lot of time trying to work out whether the ancient Egyptians gambled on the games they played. One of the most striking ideas suggested by his research is that the very notion of odds may not carry across particularly cleanly between the ancient world and the world we live in today. Modern games often use dice rolls as randomisers, allowing for an element of chance within the design, but there's no indication that the Egyptians who played Senet explored the concept of probability as a measure of likelihood - and yet they had throwsticks that seem to perform a similar job to dice.

It's possible, then, bearing Professor Tait's work in mind, that Senet's reliance on the randomising factor of the throwsticks may not have seemed much like a reliance on a randomising factor to the game's original players. Maybe Senet was a game in which the gods played alongside you, and the casting of the throwsticks became a form of divination: the gods exerting their will on the board. Would that have made it more engaging?

Thinking about how humans of the past were both exactly like us but also not like us in some key aspects of how they saw the world is something I think about all the time (I get to think about it at work too, which is a reason I do love my job). How that percolates into their worldview and attitudes. The idea that you would think about likelihoods and probabilities inherently differently... that sort of makes sense to me. Like, a game of chance might not be a game of chance to you if you weren't set in a mindset that it is a deterministic, machine-like universe (relatively, I know, quantum mechanics). Even the farthest extreme christian evangelical largely takes it as given that everyday life runs through a set of predictable rules---to them set by giant white guy god in a big robe on a throne---but ancient man probably didn't. The rules were so abstract, so little immediate connection between cause and effect, that (s)he wouldn't necessarily see it that way.

It would put a whole new spin on the Ameritrash games we play...

I read somewhere that Go started out in a similar fashion. Rather than placing the stones strategically they were cast in a more divination fashion. Only later was the divination aspect dropped and the game became a very calculating strategy game.

On the latest Ludology (posted yesterday), we interview Walter Crist, an archeologist and one of the top experts on ancient Egyptian boardgames. He recently co-authored "Ancient Egyptians At Play"..

His take on Senet varied quite a bit from the premise of the article, which is that Senet never spread, and so was a crappy game. In actuality it was found all over the Near East. In fact, more Senet boards have been found in Cyprus then Egypt, including a bunch that were carved into streets and buildings.

We really have no idea how these games were played. We have hints for some (including Senet), but we really don't know. So when folks 'reconstruct' the rules for Senet and they say what a boring game it is, I take that with a huge grain of salt.

Ludology: http://ludology.libsyn.com/ludology-episode-132-pyramid-scheme

Crist's book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Egyptians-Play-Bloomsbury-Egyptology/dp/1474221173

Geoff