Casting Senet Game Pieces

Finally got around to casting the game pieces for the Senet and Tjau games.  We hand-carved and baked the original pieces out of modeling clay, then created a single mold for each piece. From these molds, we created five game pieces of each of style (2 different styles for each player, a simple cone and spool, and a more ornate set modeled after a bundle of reeds and a papyrus flower).  Below are pictures of the sets we've made so far--really at this point we're just playing with colors.  The bottom picture shows a five-piece mold for our cone-shaped game markers.

Senet Game Board with carved lid and painted gold base pattern

Both the box and the Senet game board lid are made of pine. The 30-Square Senet board is hand-carved, and the heiroglyphs were also etched by hand.  The box was stained with an ebony wipe-on stain and then sealed. After sealing, the pattern along the bottom edge was hand-painted with gold leaf (the pattern is based on a pattern along part of King Tut's gold death mask).  A 20-Square Tjau board is carved on the flip-side of the lid.

Senet board with side drawer

Just for something different, I thought I'd work on a Senet board with a built-in drawer.  Many of the recovered Senet games have a drawer on one of the box ends.  I came across a picture a while ago of a 20 Squares board with a drawer on one of the halves of the long side of the box, which I found incredibly interesting, if only because it was so different from the other, more 'common' boxes.  Anyway, this undecorated box is my first attempt at executing a similar design.  Still needs to be stained, painted, and sealed, and I also want to fix a suitable handle to the drawer.

Here's a picture of the original 20 Squares board, which dates back to the Egyptian New Kingdom.

Oriental Institute, University of Chicago