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Entertainment

Merit carefully folded her last pleated linen dress and placed it in the box. She would seal the boxes just before her husband’s servants came to take them, and take her and her daughter as well, in their carrying chairs. Merit planned to wear one of her best red fringed dresses and of course her longest, curled wig for the short trip through town to Karnak Temple. The wife of Sennefer, Mayor of Thebes could not be seen in just anything! She knew her daughter, Mui-tui, was already packed and set to go. Merit still remembered how excited she had always been as a girl, going off with her mother for their group’s month of serving as chantresses in the temple of Amun. How important and grown up she had felt. Merit glanced out of their second-floor window at the wall of Karnak Temple, not far away. Soon she would be in the cool, dark shadows of the inner shrine, and once again she would feel herself gasp as the High Priest opened the naos doors and there he was, King of Gods, Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands!

MUSICIANS, MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS, AND SINGERS

Music played an important role in ancient Egypt. Music was enjoyed in homes, played for the king and the gods, and played to keep soldiers marching and agricultural workers working. There is a great deal of evidence from ancient Egypt for musicians and their musical instruments, as numerous tomb scenes show both women and men playing musical instruments, and many actual musical instruments have been preserved in the tombs of their owners. Musicians could be professionals, such as the female groups playing the harp, lute, and double oboe at New Kingdom banquets (1550–1069 BCE), or they were people who simply enjoyed playing, such as in the Old Kingdom (2686–2160 BCE) scene in the Saqqara tomb of the Vizier Mereruka, who was shown relaxing on his bed at home while his wife, the princess Waatetkhethor, plays the harp for him.

It must be pointed out, however, that no written musical notation is known from ancient Egypt, so it is difficult to re-create what music from ancient Egypt must have sounded like or what rhythm it had. There is some evidence from the Old Kingdom for “overseers of musicians,” who all seem to have been male, although there are females who held titles of “overseer of dancers” and “overseer of singers.” The title of “instructor of singers” has been found, which seems to have been only held by men, but there don’t seem to be women or men who were instructors of musicians.

The most common of all ancient Egyptian instruments was the harp, which changed its shape and size through time. Women in the later Old Kingdom are shown in tomb scenes playing the harp for members of their family or singing when someone else plays the harp. It has been suggested that at this time, “the performance of music was an integral part of polite society” (Teeter 1993: 87). These types of scenes, particularly the woman playing for her husband, continue into the Middle Kingdom (2055–1650 BCE). By the New Kingdom, beginning in 1550 BCE, there are professional groups of female musicians, either associated with a temple, where higher-status women held the title of “chantress,” or in groups, often with dancers, at funerals or memorial banquets held near family tombs.

THE GODDESS HATHOR AND MUSIC

The other musical context women are seen in before the period of the New Kingdom includes religious rituals, particularly for the goddess Hathor, who was associated with music. Hathor’s son, Ihy, is referred to as the god of music. He is always shown as a young boy holding a sistrum, the shaking instrument that is associated with his mother. In Hathor rituals, shaking and clapping instruments were used; the most important shaking instrument was the sistrum, which was basically a large rattle. It had a handle, often decorated with the face of Hathor, surmounted with a rectangular frame, or one curved at the top. In the frame were rows of metal wire strung with metal disks, which would click and clack against each other as the sistrum was shaken.

The other shaking instrument, the menat, was not really an instrument at all but a necklace of stone or faience beads. It was not worn but rather held in the hand by the metal counterpoise attached to it and shaken so the beads struck each other. The clicking sound of the menat and the soft jangling of the sistrum were thought to replicate the sound of rustling of papyrus stalks, a sound that pleased and calmed the goddess. From earliest times, Hathor could take the form of a cow and was associated with papyrus swamps. Hathor is often shown as a cow, standing in or emerging from a papyrus thicket.

One of the most famous depictions of Hathor as a cow is a painted limestone statue in the collection of the Cairo Museum (JE 38574–5). The piece was originally set in the chapel of the temple of Thutmose III, set back in the rock of the mountain on the West Bank of Thebes, at Deir el-Bahari. This site had a cult of the goddess Hathor going back to the reign of King Mentuhotep II (2055–2004 BCE) of the later Eleventh Dynasty. The temple was covered by stone debris from an earthquake in early Ramesside times around 1295 BCE, and the complete chapel with the statue in it was discovered in 1906. The cow is shown with papyrus all around her. A statue of the king stands right in front of her, and another depiction of the king is on the cow’s side where he kneels and sucks milk from her udder. Hathor was considered the divine mother of the king, and in this statue, her protection and care for her son are emphasized.

Clapping instruments were generally made of hippopotamus ivory and curved following the shape of the tusk. They could also be of wood. The ends, which were clapped together, were decorated with hands and details of the fingers, and bracelets at the wrists were incised into the ivory. Some clappers have a hole at the bottom, and they were tied together so that they could be held in one hand. Quite a number of clappers have been preserved in ancient Egyptian tombs. Clappers were used by magicians to make noise and scare away evil so that they might have been placed in tombs to protect the deceased in the same way.

MUSIC IN THEBAN TOMB SCENES OF THE NEW KINGDOM

There is not very much evidence for women and music in the Middle Kingdom, although scenes in the rock-cut tombs at Beni Hassan do show women playing the harp with other women singing or sitting down clapping their hands. Much more evidence exists from the New Kingdom, especially in Theban tombs, where scenes depict groups of female musicians performing at funerals and religious festivals. The New Kingdom is also a time when Egypt had expanded its power and created an empire to the north in the Near East. This contact with different peoples and cultures brought new plants, animals, and objects of all kinds, including new and different musical instruments to Egypt.

Theban Tomb 100 belonging to Rekhmire, the vizier of King Thutmose III, has an extensive banquet scene that covers eight registers, four showing women and four showing men. In the women’s part of the scene, there is a female harpist sitting down playing a ladle-shaped harp, followed by a woman playing the lute, a woman with a rectangular tambourine, and then two women who are clapping and keeping time. In one of the registers above, a woman is tuning her lute, and in front of her are seated female singers. Below in the registers of male guests is a male harpist and another man with a lute. Above them are seated male singers. The difference between the two musical groups is that the women’s musical group has a tambourine player and female clappers. The festival that is being celebrated is not clear, but it is not a funeral.

In a slightly later Eighteenth Dynasty tomb, Theban Tomb 52, belonging to the scribe and priest of Amun, named Nakht, he and his wife, a chantress of Amun, and guests are shown celebrating the Beautiful Festival of the Valley. It is a small scene taking up two registers. One woman stands with a very large boat-shaped harp, which had come into use by the time of the New Kingdom. Behind her are two other women, one playing a lute and the other a double flute. Both the lute and double flute were instruments that came into Egypt in the beginning of the New Kingdom from Mesopotamia and became very popular.

In the register above the female musicians is a blind man sitting down playing a much smaller ladle-shaped harp and singing. This specific type of harpist is only shown in some New Kingdom tombs, and when the decoration of the tomb wall is preserved, the lyrics written next to the harpist are always the same. Egyptologists have named this the “Harper’s Song.” Basically, the song explains that one should enjoy themselves, as everyone will end up in the cemetery, and no one can get rid of dying. The song also, however, praises the afterlife and points out that everyone there is “safe and sound.” This song appears to have been one only sung by men, and they are almost always depicted as blind. It is possible that being a harpist was one way a blind man could have an occupation. It has also been suggested that the man is shown blind, but perhaps he wasn’t. Appearing blind may have been merely symbolic, showing that playing music in a religious setting or ritual did not allow the musician to “see” the god. There are music scenes from the early reign of King Akhenaten at Karnak that show musicians with blindfolds over their eyes when they are playing music. This might be another way of “blinding” a musician so that the god could not be seen. It remains unclear, however, why only a male was ever depicted playing the “Harper’s Song” and also why female musicians were never shown blind or blindfolded.

A facsimile of a banquet scene in the New Kingdom tomb of Nakht, Theban Tomb 52. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

A group of women is seated right behind the blind harpist. They are smelling lotus blossoms and handing mandrake fruits to one another to smell. Mandrake was a hallucinogenic, and both the mandrake and the lotus were sedatives. The smells from these, mixed with drinking wine and beer, would have certainly caused an intoxicated euphoria in which a person could believe that they had communicated with a deity or the dead.

FESTIVALS OF DRUNKENNESS

In the two banquet scenes described previously, there was little or no food in sight. The guests were sitting, holding and smelling blue water lilies, while servants put collars of flowers around their necks and cones of unguents on their heads, as the perfume gave them ritual purity. The servants also brought wine to pour into the drinking bowls of those having wine and vessels of beer for others. Some of the servants held very small jars that apparently contained narcotic substances such as mandrake root, opium, or blue lily. These were added into the wine or beer to increase the effect of the alcohol and also to induce sleep. These festival banquets were not parties to have a few drinks and may be get tipsy. The point of these festivals was to become very inebriated, to the point of gaining an altered state of consciousness, or euphoria. This was a religious or spiritual intoxication that could allow one to have contact with or see a deceased person or a deity. The festival went on all night with guests staying there to sleep and dream of the deceased, or if it was a festival of a goddess, like Hathor, to have an epiphany of the goddess.

The banquet would have taken place in the courtyard right in front of the tomb’s entrance to the chapel. The shaft down to the burial chamber would have been out in the courtyard. Early excavators did not pay much attention to the courtyard itself. The pylon-like entrance to the courtyard and the walls must have been in ruins, and the archaeologists just dug away, along with all the other deposits in the courtyard, to reach the shaft opening for the burial and the door for entering the rooms of the painted and decorated chapel. More recent excavations of tombs at Thebes have paid attention to the area outside the tomb door and found blackened areas where offering had been burned, broken pottery from banquet drinking, and plant remains from the flower collars worn by the guests. This is much like what has been found in excavations of the floors of the chapels next to the workmen’s village at Amarna.

THE TEMPLE OF MUT AND THE FESTIVAL OF DRUNKENNESS

The goddess Mut was the wife of the god Amun and the mother of their son, the god Khonsu, the moon god. Both Khonsu and Mut had their own temples, but they were all part of the Karnak Temple complex of the god Amun on the East Bank of the Nile at Thebes. Excavations at the Mut Temple, south of the Amun Temple, in 2004 discovered blocks and columns buried down under the temple floor. The style of the texts on the blocks pointed to the reign of Hatshepsut, and finally five columns were found with the following inscription:

The King of Upper and Lower Egypt Maatkara. She made (it) as a monument for her mother Mut, the lady of Isheru, making for her a columned hall/porch of drunkenness anew, that she might do “given life like Re forever.”(Bryan 2014: 103)

Maatkara is the crown name of Hatshepsut, which translates roughly as “Truth is the soul of Ra.” Hatshepsut refers to her mother as Mut, because in the New Kingdom, Amun was accepted as the divine father of the king. Mut first becomes important at Thebes in the earlier part of the Eighteenth Dynasty, during the reign of Hatshepsut. Mut is called “Lady of Isheru” because there is a u-shaped lake that surrounds three sides of her temple, and the lake is referred to as “Ishseru” in ancient Egypt. The meaning of the word is not known, but other temples or chapels for goddesses who could manifest themselves as a feline have this form of lake as well. Mut is most often shown as a woman, but she can also be a woman with a lion’s head. Her sacred animal was the cat, which probably explains why Mut is closely associated with two other goddesses: Sakhmet, the lioness, and Bastet, the kitty cat. Hathor can also be a lioness or a cat and associated with Mut.

As Mut became most important during the reign of Hatshepsut, her temple at South Karnak might have first been built in stone at that time. Several statues of high officials who served Hatshepsut were found in Mut’s temple, including one of her stewards, Senmut, who was also “Director of the Royal Works at Karnak.” It was during Hatshepsut’s reign that a processional route was created running south from Amun’s Karnak Temple to the Mut Temple. It appears that toward the end of the reign of Hatshepsut’s stepson, Thutmose III, the blocks of the porch for the Festival of Drunkenness at the Mut Temple were taken down and used as fill. This fits in with other removal and destruction of Hatshepsut’s monuments in order to pave the way for Amenhotep II, son of Thutmose III, to take the throne after his father.

CHANTRESSES OR SHEMAYIT

Beginning with the New Kingdom, about 1550 BCE the most common religious title held by a woman was “chantress” or shemayit. It seems that with the disappearance of the title of priestess by the Middle Kingdom, the role of women changed from a priestess who would carry out rituals in a temple to a chantress providing music, singing, and dancing for the temple rituals. Most of the chantresses were attached to the cult of the god Amun, based in Thebes at the temple of Karnak. In the beginning, the title “chantress” was held by elite women married to important officials in the Theban area, but later the title spread and was used by women of lower social class as well. By the time of the Twenty-Second Dynasty, around 945 BCE, the title had mostly disappeared. It is not known what training these women would have had to be a chantress. In some cases, it is clear that the title was handed down from mother to daughter, whereas in others, becoming a chantress seemed to have been a personal decision.

Chantresses were organized into four groups with an overseer for each group. There was a system whereby each group worked in the temple for a month, and then another group rotated in. So, every woman had a month of work and then ninety days when she was back at home again. No matter what god or goddess they served, all chantresses held a sistrum and a menat, which were the objects used in rituals of Hathor. Their role in the temple was to sing, clap, and sometimes play string instruments to provide music that pleased and satisfied the god or goddess. For example, in Karnak Temple, the chantresses would accompany the High Priest of Amun, or possibly even the king, as he performed the rituals of the care and feeding of the god Amun. This would take place three times a day. As payment, each of the chantresses, like each of the priests, would receive a part of the divine offerings. Since money did not exist in ancient Egypt, salaries were paid in what people need to live on. A chantress would receive grain to make beer and bread, pieces of meat or poultry, as well as fruits and vegetables.

There were women who held the title hsyt, or “singer,” who were attached to the temple of the goddess Mut in South Karnak. The singers of Mut seem to be much the same as the chantresses of Amun but not with the same status and importance. Other women who held the title of “singer” are shown holding sistra (plural of sistrum) and menat necklaces in processions or celebrations outside of the temple. These women accompanied the god Amun in processions for oracles, in the trip south to Luxor Temple for the Opet Festival, and in crossing the river to the west side of Thebes for the Beautiful Festival of the Valley. The chantresses who had access to the temple had a higher status than the other women who took part in festivities only outside of the temple. Temples were considered to be the house of the god or goddess who lived in it. Therefore, it was private and off-limits for anyone but the highest religious officials and ritualists.

DANCE AND DANCERS

The evidence for dance and female dancers in ancient Egypt comes mostly from tomb scenes that depict a funeral, a funerary ritual associated with the goddess Hathor, or a banquet. There are also relevant titles known at this time held by women who are called “supervisor of the dancers” or “overseer of the dancers.” Depictional evidence of dancers in ancient Egypt really begins with the Fourth Dynasty (2613–2494 BCE), particularly in scenes carved in mastaba tombs at Giza and Saqqara. The name khener for these dancers starts being used in the Fifth Dynasty (2494–2445 BCE) and signifies that the dancers belong to the cult of the goddess Hathor. The khener dancers not only danced but they sang and clapped as well.

Early Egyptological studies interpreted the word khener as having to do with women in the royal harem, but this has been shown to be a mistake. In the later part of the Old Kingdom, male dancers joined the khener, and men can be found with the title “overseer of the dancers.” By the beginning of the Middle Kingdom, around 2055 BCE, only men are “overseers of the dancers” and not women. Societal changes take place between the Old and Middle Kingdoms in which women lose titles giving them control over other people, and instead, women gain a new title “mistress of the house” that proclaims their position as a housewife.

The khener dancers can be found in a number of contexts. They can entertain the king, accompany a funeral procession, dance for a god or goddess in their temple, and appear at a childbirth. Some scholars have suggested that dancers in the khener also functioned as midwives. In one of the stories of the so-called Westcar Papyrus, which dates from the Hyksos Period around 1650 BCE but is set in the time of King Khufu in the Fourth Dynasty, the wife of a priest of the sun god, Ra, is going to give birth. Ra orders several female goddesses to go and help the birth as the woman is going to have triplets. These babies are actually the sons of Ra, and they will become the next three kings of Egypt. Isis, Nephthys, Meskhenet, and Heket, the female goddesses sent to help, “change their appearance to dancing girls,” and when they arrive at the priest’s house, they say, “Let us see her. We understand childbirth.” Isis says a spell for each baby to slide out easily, and Meskhenet announces for each baby that he is “[a] king who will assume kingship in this whole land” (Lichtheim 1973: 220).

In the Saqqara mastaba belonging to Mereruka, the vizier of King Tety (2345–2323 BCE), there is a section of four rooms just for his wife, the princess Waatetkhethor. She holds titles of “Priestess of Hathor” and “Priestess of Neith” as well as being the “King’s eldest daughter.” On the north wall of the innermost room, Waatetkhethor, whose figure is mostly broken, is seated, watching five registers of female dancers. In the top two registers, pairs of women hold hands and dance together, while two other women standing in each register clap their hands. The bottom three registers all have rows of dancers doing different steps. All the dancers wear a broad collar and a short kilt, and their long hair hangs down behind them, ending in the shape of a ball. There are short phrases in hieroglyphs written between and above the dancers. Not all the words can be understood, but it seems to be a song or chant that has to do with childbirth. Clearly in the next to bottom register, the words above the two dancers leaning far back on one leg are “Behold, it is the secret of birth.” In other registers are the words, “come,” “hurry,” and “pull.”

Khener dancers, particularly in the early Middle Kingdom, have tattoos in the form of lines and dashes and dots arranged in the shape of diamonds. The mummies of three women found buried by the funerary temple of Mentuhotep II (2055–2004 BCE) at Deir el-Bahari had tattoos like these. One tomb was undisturbed, and the coffin in the burial chamber held the body of a woman with the titles “Priestess of Hathor” and “Sole ornament of the king.” Her tattoos appear to be all dots in lines. Nearby two further burials were found with tattooed women, but they had been badly disturbed, and no textual evidence remained. The woman in Pit 23 had been wearing jewelry around her neck, waist, and wrists, based on impressions left in her skin from beads and residue from silver oxide (Roehrig 2015: 529). She had numerous diamond shapes formed by dots on her chest, the front of her arms, across the front of her abdomen, the front of her thighs, and the top of her feet. The woman from Pit 26 had no evidence of jewelry, same diamond tattoos but fewer of them, and none on her feet. From the broken remains of wooden funerary objects in both pits, as well as a beautiful sa, or protection amulet of electrum and silver from Pit 23, along with the location of their burials, clearly these two women held some kind of status in the cult of Hathor or court of King Mentuhotep II. It has been suggested that they are priestesses of Hathor and perhaps were khener dancers at the royal court.

There are dolls, called paddle dolls because of their shape, with similar tattoos like those on the women just discussed previously. A large number of these dolls also were discovered in tombs in the same area at Deir el-Bahari as the tombs of the tattooed women. It has been suggested that these dolls represent khener dancers, and they have been put in tombs to provide Hathoric dances for the ka, or soul, of the deceased (Morris 2011).

OUTDOOR SPORTS

Females in ancient Egypt did seem to take part in activities that would be considered outdoor sports but in a somewhat limited way. There are tomb scenes showing girls and young women throwing and catching a ball, juggling balls, doing somersaults, or practicing acrobatic dance moves. These types of dances would be like those done by the khener, just discussed previously. Girls must have learned to swim, as with the nearby Nile River and the numerous canals, the threat of drowning must have been ever present. Swimming, however, must also have been quite dangerous with the presence of hippopotami and crocodiles. There are several references to royal children learning to swim, but it is not clear if that included female royal children.

Females are rarely depicted swimming except on certain cosmetic objects from the New Kingdom (1550–1069 BCE). Cosmetic “spoons,” used to scoop up unguents and oils, often have the figure of naked young women, only wearing a bead girdle, stretched out swimming, as the handle, with her arms under the spoon part. The spoon can also take the shape of a bird, with the wings covering the top of the spoon, attached with a peg so that they can be swung open and closed. Beginning in the later Eighteenth Dynasty, love poetry is written, and there is one poem in which a young woman wants to go down to the pond with a young man and wade into the water with him. She says, “Then I’d dive deep down and come up for you dripping” (Foster 1973: 20).

LOVE POETRY OF THE NEW KINGDOM

Three papyri and fragments from a large ostracon, all from Thebes and most probably originally from the village of Deir el-Medineh, have texts that are known as love poems. They date to the Ramesside Period (1295–1069 BCE), are written in the Late Egyptian dialect, and reflect the fact that these texts have been written by well-educated and sophisticated scribes, who were probably men, not women, although who actually composed these poems or songs is not known. The four different sources are Papyrus Chester Beatty 1, Papyrus Harris 500, Papyrus Turin 1966, and Ostracon 25218 in the Cairo Museum. All together they provide more than fifty different “songs” or “recitations.” It has been suggested that these poems developed out of songs sung at festival drinking banquets, or they were possibly connected to festivals for the goddess Hathor, where they might have been recited or sung.

At the beginning of each of the poems, the text states, “Beginning of the speech of Entertainment” or “Beginning of the song of Entertainment,” so some are clearly to be sung and others to be recited. The evidence seems to show that recited or sung, it was men who were presenting this love poetry. It is also possible that there were musicians who accompanied the song or poem, and they could have been either men or women. It seems clear, however, that the love poetry was meant to be presented publicly at special events and gatherings, not simply read by someone silently.

For the most part, the poems are set outdoors in marshes, gardens, or near bodies of water, and they often make reference to Hathor, or “the Golden One,” one of the names given to Hathor, in various ways. Some poems are written from the point of view of the female lover, while others are from the male’s point of view. A few examples of beginning lines are as follows: “I love a girl but she lives over there, on the too far side of the river”; “When we kiss, and her warm lips half open, I fly cloud-high without beer!”; and “I just chanced to be happening by in the neighborhood where he lives. His door, as I hoped was open—and I spied on my secret love.” (Foster 1974).

CHARIOTS AND WOMEN

Chariots and horses appear in ancient Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period (1650–1550 BCE), when they are brought in by Asiatic invaders known as the Hyksos. The chariot is quickly adopted by the Egyptians. It becomes important for the military and the police, in hunting, and in official transportation in general. The chariot is also something that is basically reserved for royalty and the elite, as to attain and maintain a chariot and horses would have been very expensive. Chariots and horses are only used by men in the New Kingdom, except for the Amarna period, when not only Queen Nefertiti, the wife of King Akhenaten (1352–1336 BCE), and her daughters are seen riding in chariots but the queen herself is shown driving one as well. Blocks from a religious building of Akhenaten at Karnak Temple in Thebes have the remains of a scene of the king riding in a chariot with the queen driving her own chariot behind him. Scenes in elite tombs at Amarna show the king, queen, and their daughters in a chariot together, as well as the king in his own chariot, followed by the queen in hers, and then, behind them, their daughters in chariots along with female attendants and male chariot drivers. It could be that the chariot driver is left out of the scene with the queen to stress her ability and independence, but in any case, at least in the Amarna Period, it was acceptable to have royal females in chariots. There is no evidence for royal or elite females driving or riding in a chariot in any other period of ancient Egyptian history.

These tomb scenes in elite tombs at Amarna also always portray the procession of the royal family down the King’s Road from the king’s palace residence in the very north of the city to the large temple of the god Aten, the sun disk, in the center of the city. There the entire royal family took part in offering rituals for the god Aten. King Akhenaten made a number of changes to standard ancient Egyptian religion, central to which was his acceptance of the disk of the sun, the Aten, to be his only god. He and his family were the only ones who had access to the Aten, and so they functioned as the intermediaries between Aten and the people. In traditional Egyptian religion, festivals included processions of gods and goddesses out of their temples so that the general population could at least view the closed, small chapel in which a god or goddess’s image was kept, as it was being carried by the priests. In this way, people felt that they were part of the festive activities going on. Temples were the private property of deities and closed to everyone other than high priests, so public processions were something very special. King Akhenaten made up for the lack of these processions by allowing the population of his city to view him and his family processing down the royal road on a daily basis.

BOARD GAMES

Board games were as popular in ancient Egypt as they are in modern times. They are found in all types of materials, from beautiful wood for royalty to clay for peasants. The oldest board game known was called mehen, the snake game, as Mehen was a snake that guarded the sun god in the underworld. The board game was round and decorated with the coiled body of a snake, with spaces marked off from the tail up to the head, which was in the center. The little square spaces alternated with being a little down or a little up, so there is an interesting pattern to the board. The playing pieces were round, the size of marbles, or else in the shape of small lions. Movement seems to have been decided by throwing sticks. This game was known from the Predynastic Period through to the end of the First Intermediate Period, which is at least two thousand years. Game boards for mehen have been found in clay, limestone, wood, and ivory and in different sizes, as well as with differences in the number of spaces a player had to move through to finish.

The most popular game in ancient Egypt was senet, or the “passing” game. It was first known in the beginning of the Old Kingdom (about 2686 BCE) and was popular all the way through to the end of the New Kingdom (1069 BCE). In the beginning, senet was just a game, but with the New Kingdom, the movement of the pieces on the board became symbolic of the hazardous journey into the afterlife. Playing senet against an unknown, invisible opponent, that is, your fate, became the illustration for Spell 17 of the Book of the Dead. The most famous tomb scene that depicts playing senet is that of Queen Nefertari in her tomb (no. 66) in the Valley of the Queens.

The senet board was rectangular and divided into thirty squares. In the New Kingdom, when senet became symbolic of the journey to the afterlife, certain squares were decorated and took on special meaning. The very first square was associated with the god Thoth, because he is the one who leads you to your judgment in front of the god Osiris. The last five squares were all marked with hieroglyphs or depictions. The decoration details on the last five squares can differ somewhat, but usually square 26 says “good,” which might mean that the piece can move to the end and finish. Square 27 is marked with water signs, which seems to mean that if a piece lands there, it is removed. The very last square has a depiction of Ra-Horakhty, or the sun god rising on the horizon, reborn, meaning that finishing the game was symbolic of successfully reaching the afterlife.

Senet was played by two people, one with tall pieces that were cone shaped and the other with short pieces that were like spools. In early tomb scenes showing this game, each player has seven pieces, but by the New Kingdom, they only use five each. Sticks or bones were thrown to see how far to move, and the players went up and down the board from square one to square thirty. No actual rules have ever been found, but it is possible to figure out most of how the game must have been played.

Senet, the most popular board game played in ancient Egypt. (Perseomedusa/Dreamstime.com)

The senet game is made in the shape of a rectangular box, with a drawer that can slide out of one end of the box and that holds the pieces and the throw sticks. The game box can also be turned over, and on the bottom of the other side is the game board for 20-Squares, another very popular game. The same pieces are used as for senet, and sticks or knucklebones can be thrown to determine movement. 20-Squares appears to be just a simple and faster version of senet, and it became popular beginning in the early New Kingdom, around 1550 BCE.

The last known ancient Egyptian board game is called “dog and jackals,” but this is a modern name, as the ancient name is unknown. The most famous example of this game is in the Metropolitan Museum in New York (26.7.1287 a–k). The game board, made out of ivory and ebony, was discovered in a late Twelfth Dynasty (1985–1773 BCE) tomb at Thebes in 1910 and is complete with all its playing pieces. The game board has an odd shape, which has been described as that of an axe-blade or that of a shield. It has a drawer underneath for the playing pieces and is set up on four legs carved in the shape of a bull’s legs. The board itself is decorated with a palm tree and has twenty-nine small holes running along each side up to the top of the tree and then back along the trunk of the tree. Two people played the game, one with short pegs that have the heads of dogs and another with tall pegs that have the heads of jackals. Each player had five pegs. The rules are unknown, but sticks much have been thrown and the opponents tried to be the first to get their pegs through all the holes and off the board. This game seems to have only been popular in the Middle Kingdom (2055–1650 BCE) and disappeared after that. Flinders Petrie found a very unsophisticated clay board for “dogs and jackals” at the Middle Kingdom town of Lahun, so it was a game enjoyed by the working class as well as the elite.

TOYS

Identifying a toy in an archaeological context is sometimes problematic. For many years, clay and wood figures of women found in tombs were thought to be toys. Now they are accepted as fertility symbols, and certain ones, which have been called “paddle dolls” because of their shape and decoration, are interpreted as khener dancers of the goddess Hathor and are put in the tomb to help with the rebirth of the deceased. Another difficulty is in assigning toys to girls or to boys. Dolls, of course, are always thought to be for girls, while something like a sling shot would be thought of as a boy’s toy. These types of interpretations always need to be reconsidered, as modern ideas are much different than ancient ones, and assigning gender roles to ancient people is fraught with modern cultural biases. Objects that are found in settlement contexts that appear to be toys have a better chance of actually being toys than those found in tombs. A number of such objects were found in the Middle Kingdom layer of the town of Lahun by Flinders Petrie in the late 1800s.

There were balls, two made of leather stuffed with grass and two just out of wood. Clay models were found that could have been votives of some kind; one was a boat, although broken, and another a figure of a pig. Small figures, such as crocodiles made out of clay, have been found in settlements, sometimes broken, and often assumed to have been toys. There are magical spells known from ancient Egypt, however, that are to be recited over the figure of a crocodile, which is then to be broken in half. Archaeologists need to be very open-minded, therefore, in certain interpretations of ancient objects.

Some wooden objects with movable parts tied to strings must have been toys. One such toy was found in the Middle Kingdom cemetery at Lisht and is now in the collection of the Cairo Museum. The figures of three dancing dwarves were fit on to a piece of wood. Small holes were cut to insert strings to attach to the bottom of the figures so that they would move when the strings were pulled. Two other movable toys are known from the New Kingdom (1550–1069 BCE) and are in the collection of the British Museum in London. One is a mouse made of clay, with a long thin piece of wood for the lower jaw of the mouse that goes all the way through to the back of the mouse and serves as the tail. The other toy is a walking cat on a base carved in wood. The lower jaw of the cat’s mouth is movable, and a string goes from the jaw up through the head so that it can be pulled. It is a carefully done piece with rock crystal set in for the cat’s eyes and the teeth are done in bronze. Apparently, this piece was found at Thebes.

The caveat to a discussion of toys in ancient Egypt may be that the idea of special objects made for children to play with might be a rather modern idea. Perhaps play in ancient societies was simply watching what adults did and copying it at a level possible by a child. If children accompanied their parents and joined in, as far as they were able to, what the parent was involved in, not only was the child occupied but was also learning life skills at the same time. Or, perhaps toys were restricted to children from families who could afford toys, as well as afford to let their children spend time playing.

DOCUMENT: QUEEN NEFERTARI, TOMB 66 IN THE VALLEY OF THE QUEENS

On the northwest wall of the first chamber of her tomb, Tomb 66 in the Valley of the Queens, Queen Nefertari, the King’s Great Wife of Ramses II, is shown sitting in a pavilion playing senet. The queen holds a sekhem scepter in her right hand, which symbolizes power or control, and with her left hand, she reaches forward to move a piece on the senet board. No opponent sits facing her, because the queen is playing against Fate to be allowed to enter the afterlife and live forever. Just above her the text reads:

The Osiris, the King’s Great Wife, Mistress of the Two Lands, Nefertari, Beloved of the Goddess Mut, Justified in the presence of the Great God Osiris.

Spell 17 of the Book of the Dead is written in small vertical columns below the scene. The text in the tomb uses the pronoun “he” rather than “she” in two places. The beginning of the spell with the relevant part about senet reads:

Beginning of the praise and recitations of going in and out of the necropolis, of being a blessed one in the beautiful West. Going forth by day, assuming any form he (?) wishes, playing senet sitting in a pavilion, coming forth as a living soul, by the Osiris, the King’s Great Wife, Mistress of the Two Lands, Nefertari, Beloved of the Goddess Mut, justified after he (?)dies. It is effective for the one who does (this) on earth.

Source: Text translated by Lisa Sabbahy from a photograph of the tomb scene and text.