Editing Senet (section)

===Modern rules===
[[File:Blue Ibis Egyptian Senet board game.jpg|thumb|A modern recreation of the Senet board game by Blue Ibis Egyptian Senet]]
Although details of the original game rules are a subject of some conjecture, historians Timothy Kendall and [[Robert Charles Bell|R. C. Bell]] have made their own reconstructions of the game rules.<ref name="Soubeyrand2" /> These rules are based on snippets of texts that span over a thousand years, over which time gameplay is likely to have changed. Therefore, it is unlikely these rules reflect the exact course of ancient Egyptian gameplay.<ref name=":12">{{cite journal |last1=Crist |first1=Walter |display-authors=etal |year=2016 |title=Facilitating Interaction: Board Games as Social Lubricants in the Ancient Near East |journal=Oxford Journal of Archaeology |volume=35 |issue=2 |pages=179–196 |doi=10.1111/ojoa.12084}}</ref> However, their rules have been adopted by sellers of modern senet sets.

====Kendall====
In Dr. Timothy Kendall's rules, the object of the game is for one player to advance all five of their pawns across the senet board and remove them before the second player does so. The game's length can be extended by increasing the number of pawns allocated to each player as desired, to a maximum of ten pawns per player. The original iteration of Kendall's rules published in 1979 called for seven pawns per player.

Players take turns and begin by throwing a set of four flat wooden [[Binary lot#Staves|sticks]] with one side painted white and the other side painted black (or differentiated by some other means), equivalent to two-sided dice. The number of sticks that land on white determines how far a single pawn may advance that turn. One white stick and three black sticks signifies that the player may advance one of their pawns forward by 1 house, two white sticks means the pawn can advance by 2 houses, and so on. If all four sticks land on black, then the pawn can advance by 5 houses.

[[File:Senet_board_numbered.JPG|thumb|The path of pieces through the 30 squares of the Senet board, as numbered by Peter Piccione<ref name=":6"/>]]
The player selects a pawn and places it on the senet board starting at the first house (numbered 1 in the chart on the right), then moves the pawn forward according to the result of the stick roll. If doing this will result in a pawn coming to rest on a house already occupied by one of their pawns, they must move the newer pawn backward to the first empty house. If the house is occupied by a pawn belonging to the opposing player, then the opponent's pawn can be captured: the player may optionally choose to place their own pawn in the occupied house, then move the opposing player's pawn backward to the first empty house available. Players can move their pawns ahead of each other's pawns as necessary with one exception: if a player forms a line of three or more of their pawns on contiguous, sequential houses, then the other player cannot move any of their own pawns past that formation.

The five decorated houses on the senet board plus House 30, the final house, each have special rules that must be followed:

*House 15, "the Ankh": Behaves like a standard, non-decorated house, but is tied to House 27 as described below.
*House 26, "the House of Happiness": Pawns cannot bypass this house under any circumstance, each pawn must land on it at least once before it can be legally taken off the board.
*House 27, "the House of Water": Any pawn that lands on House 27 must be immediately moved to House 15 or to the first empty house preceding House 15.
*House 28, "the House of Three Truths": Any pawn that lands on House 28 cannot be moved to any other house, and capturing is prohibited. The player can remove their pawn from the board on the first turn that they roll exactly 3 white sticks.
*House 29, "the House of Re-Atoum": Any pawn that lands on House 29 cannot be moved to any other house, and capturing is prohibited. The player can remove their pawn from the board on the first turn that they roll exactly 2 white sticks.
*House 30, "the House of Horus": Any pawn that lands on House 30 can still be captured. The player can remove their pawn from the board on the first turn that they roll exactly 1 white stick, or if the first row of the senet board (Houses 1 through 10) is not occupied by any pawns.

====Bell====
R.C. Bell's rules, also first published in 1979, are mostly identical to Kendall's except on the following points. Both players always begin with ten pawns each. All pawns are placed on the board from the start of the game, beginning with a white pawn in House 1, then a black pawn in House 2, and so on until the first two rows of the board are filled. In place of sticks, players take turns rolling a single four-sided die, and turn priority is determined at the start by whoever rolls a higher number. Capturing is mandatory when the opportunity presents itself, but the capturing player confiscates the opposing pawn and removes it from the board, which prevents the opponent from being able to score it. As for the five decorated houses, they have simpler special rules: pawns on those houses cannot be captured, but their owners can take them off the board and score them on the first turn that they roll a specific number. The game ends when the board is emptied, and the winner is whoever scored the most of their own pawns.