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Free-time Activities in Ancient Egypt

The ancient Egyptians worked hard, but they made sure they left time to have fun too. They
especially enjoyed playing board games.
One of their favourite board games was ‘Mehen’. The board looked like a snake lying in a circle.
The head of the snake was in the middle of the board. Players moved their piece from the tail of
the snake to the head to win. Egyptians played this board game until around 2000 BCE and then
stopped. But experts don’t know why.
Another popular board game was ‘Senet’. People of all ages played this game. Everyone from the
king in his palace to the poor men on the street liked to play. The game dates from 3500 BCE and
is one of the first board games that people invented. The board has thirty squares one for every
month in the ancient Egyptian calendar, but no one knows how people played the game.
People found ‘Senet’ boards at quite a few ancient sites and there are even some that people built
into the walls of the ancient Pyramids. Maybe the builders played the game on their breaks.
Ancient Egyptians put four ‘Senet’ boards in the ground with King Tutankhamen’s body and this
made some historians think that the game had something to do with life after we die. But no one
knows for sure.
Even though ‘Mehen’ and ‘Senet’ are thousands of years old, there are modern types on the
Internet that you can play. So, you can do what the ancient Egyptians did in their free time.

SENET

Read the text and mark the statements as T (true), F (false) or

DS (doesn’t say).

1. People used a snake to play ‘Mehen’. .........

2. ‘Mehen’ was a simple game to play. .........
3. We know why people stopped playing ‘Mehen’. .........
4. ‘Senet’ is over 5,500 years old. .........
5. The ancient Egyptian calendar has more than twelve months. .........
6. We do not know the rules of the game ‘Senet’. .........
7. We don’t know why Tutankhamen’s body had four ‘Senet’ boards with it. .........
8. People don’t play modern versions of ‘Mehen’ these days. .........

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