How to Make a Senet Board

Senet was the much-loved board game of the ancient Egyptians. In this step-by-step tutorial, you will learn how to make a senet board with household materials for you to play with friends and family!

 Steps

1. 1
   Gather your materials!
2. 2
   

   Shoebox
   Take your shoe box (w/lid) and wrap it with newspaper so that it covers every little bit. Make sure it is tight and then stick it down with some pieces of tape.
3. 3
   

   Wrap newspaper securely
   Wrap one more layer of newspaper around the box and secure with tape.
4. 4
   

   NOT DRY
   Tear the paper towels into strips and soak in the tub of PVA. Drape onto box until fully covered. Air dry!
5. 5
   Then paint. Once dry, mix the yellow and brown paint on the palette to get a nice yellow-brown/light brown colour. This might take a while so be patient.
6. 6
   Next, with the paintbrush apply the light brown paint on one face at a time (not someone's face but the shoe box's) . Leave in safe place with sunlight to air dry!
7. 7
   Once dry, with a pencil rule 3 rows and 10 columns.
8. 8
   Go over pencil lines with black pen.
9. 9
   Draw the symbols.With pencil, draw in the 2nd/middle row, 6th column from left an ankh sign (symbol of life).  In the last row, 6th column from left, draw a bird ancient Egyptian style. In the last row, 7th column from left, draw 3 parallel waves. In the last row, 8th column from left, draw 3 dots (like an upside down therefore symbol) and in the last row, 9th column from left, draw an eye of Horus.
10. 10
    Go over symbols in paint. Paint over the ankh symbol in blue paint (thin brush), the bird in red, the waves and the dots in blue and the eye of Horus in red.
11. 11
    Decorate box with ancient Egyptian symbols and designs.

 Tips

• Instead of the light brown paint, you can just apply gold.
• Look online for the symbols.
• Look online for the rules.

  Things You'll Need

• For Board
  • 1 shoe box OR a approx. 30cm length, 12cm depth & 12cm width box
  • newspaper
  • masking tape
  • paper towels
  • tub of watered down PVA art glue
  • acrylic paint (essential colours are brown, yellow, blue & red)
  • thick paintbrush and thin paintbrush
  • mixing palette
  • pencil
  • black pen

You can substitute paper towels with toilet rolls. This is a price-saver as covering the box only requires a few layers of toilet roll. You can also substitute the light brown paint with a natural or light pinkish colour as well as gold. Your palette can just be a plastic tray or you can mix colours by putting paint on your newspaper, then you can mix paint straight off the newspaper. You may also want to put newspaper out in your working space.

N.B For more information and updates visit www.campusflava.com