Washington D.C. [USA], Feb 12 : When you think of board games, death and the underworld are probably not the first things that might come to your mind.
However, going by what archaeological research is now suggesting, the ancient Egyptians had a comparatively distinct taste when it came to such seemingly mundane past time activities.
According to Fox News, the Egyptians that lived around 3500 years ago, were playing what has been termed as the "board game of death," which was supposedly used to contact the souls of the deceased.
The game which goes by the name 'senet', was enjoyed by the people from all sections of Egyptian society. Senet initially came into existence some 5000 years ago but lost popularity after 2500 years.
As reported by Fox News, an expert now claims that he has found a senet board from the period when it began to be used as a tool to communicate with the dead.
Egyptologists suggest that that senate was a game that involved two players, each of whom had five pawns to themselves that were arranged in a grid comprising of 30 squares divided into three rows of ten.
The game went forward as the participants rolled the dice and moved their pawns with the final aim of placing all five of them at the "finish" point situated at the lower right corner of the board.
Through time, however, the ancient Egyptian texts started describing senet as a representation of the soul moving through the realm of the dead.
A board on exhibit at the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum has shown promise for unearthing the evolution of this mysterious game.
One of the squares on the board has a hieroglyphic symbol of water engraved on it, which according to experts represents a river or a lake that the Egyptians believed the dead came across on their journey within the underworld.
Walter Crist, an archaeologist at Maastricht University wrote in his research paper that got published in The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology: "It may be one of the first times that this aspect of the journey through the afterlife is visually rendered on the board."