Silhouettes

Here's an example of where an experiment with one of our early Senet boxes led to a surprising result.  We painted the crane images on bare, untreated pine using egg tempera, and THEN applied the stain.  The paint itself was stripped off, leaving somewhat ghostly silhouettes.  This technique needs perfecting, but we were very happy with the results, despite the loss of the original colors.

20 Square (Tjau) board and pieces

This picture shows one of our 20-Square (Tjau) boards, with prototype game pieces and a set of knucklebones for dice.  The pieces were sculpted in clay and then cast in resin; we'll probably create molds to easily create complete sets for each game board.

Tjau boards were well known during the same time as Senet, and could be often found on the opposite side of Senet boards.  This particular set has a Senet board on the flip side of the lid.

Knucklebones

Hand-carved knucklebones.  In addition to throwing sticks, the ancient Egyptians used knuckbones (early dice, from  a bone in the ankle of a sheep).  We carved these from pine using a picture of King Tut's ivory Senet board set as a guide.

Senet gameboard box blanks

Cut and assembled the frames of two more senet gameboards today.  Right now we're keeping with dimensions of 2.5"x5"x14", mainly using 3/8" pine stock.  For the joints we're using fingerjoints right now, but most of the boxes we've created so far have standard mitered joints.  Tomorrow I'll cut the grooves and fit the box floors, cut from red oak plywood, as well as the box lid/gameboards.

Riverbank scene, draft to final

Variations of riverbanks scenes were the first styles we applied to our Senet boxes.  The concept is penciled in, then we paint it using it egg tempera.

Senet Board--gold leaf

This board is a favorite of ours, stained ebony with gold-leaf bird silhouettes and gold-leaf playing squares.  We still need to paint the heiroglyphs, but we'll be playing around with more like this.

Senet Game Board

The first types of game boards we've decided to work on are the ancient Egyptian games of Senet and Tjau.  Senet boards have been found dating back more than 5,000 years. While no ancient documentation exists explaining the rules of Senet or Tjau, various scholars have worked out variations of how the game may have been played.

Below is a picture of one of the early boards we've put together.  Senet boards are composed of three rows of ten squares.  A similar ancient game, variously called 20 Squares, or sometimes, but apparently incorrectly, also called 'Tjau', was often found with Senet boards.  The game board we put together has a 30-Square Senet board on one side of the lid, and a 20-square Tjau board on the other (Tjau board is depicted below, the 20 playing squares being the dark squares).

Instead of decorating the box with images of Egyptian mythology, we decided to use other images of animals and depictions of scenery that were common to ancient Egypt.  For paints, we're mixing the colored pigments with egg yolk (egg tempera), an ancient technique that was familiar to the egyptians.