Senet and a Royal Game of Ur

The Royal Game of Ur is played with two sets of seven markers. One set is black, the other white along with tetrahedral dice. There was some speculation as to how this game was played.

It is suggested that players start on their own corresponding spots and the pieces enter and leave on the same block, a kind of circuit around the board and each player meets along a narrow bridge where they are able to take out each others markers. Another idea is that there is no combat of any kind and it is simply a race to get all of ones markers on and off the board before the other player.

Robert Bell seems to think that the rosettes present on the board have some sort of significance but it is unknown as to what. Becker comes to a conclusion that both player with 7 markers and 3 dice have to fight their way across the board but it is also unknown as to which direction or where they start and finish.

Senet was a difficult game to understand, I'll start with the rules:

We each had 7 identical playing pieces and 4 tetrahedral dice each tippexed with two white tips.

Score               Dice Combination

1                      Three plain and one marked    and Throw Again

2                      Two plain and two marked      END OF TURN

3                      One plain and three marked     END OF TURN

4                      None plain and four marked    and Throw Again

5                      Four plain and none marked    and Throw Again

1.      The first player to throw 1 begins play.

2.      Pieces can only move forward

3.      A piece may land on an empty square, or swap places with an opponents undefended place

4.      Two pieces of the same colour on adjacent squares defend one another and cannot be swapped

5.      Three consecutive pieces cannot be overtaken by the opponent.

6.      Throws of 1, 4 or 5 allow you to throw again.

7.      Successive throws are made before move a piece or pieces.

8.      Multiple throws can be subdivided between pieces, so if you throw a nine, you can chose to move one piece nine squares or to move one piece six squares and one piece three squares and so on.

9.      The last five squares with hieroglyphic signs have special meanings. Squares 26, 28, 29 and 30 are safe: if a piece is on one of these squares, the other players pieces cannot land on the square and swap with it.

Reading it back, it seems a lot clearer than it did when we were first presented with the player sheet and rules. Perhaps we didn't read the rules more thoroughly but I think we had to restart the game numerous times before we managed to understand it, if only, a little bit.

The idea behind it was that it was some form of race game but each piece had to make it to the end in order for either player to win. It makes for a very challenging and long game as you can easily prevent players from moving their pieces by simply having three in a row, which prevented them from moving, unless you (or they) made the move forward and opened up a space.