Egyptian game Number of players: 2 (up to a max. 6 on request) Duration: 2 hours Measurements: 23 x 23 cm Mehen is one of the oldest board games in the world, together with the Royal Board of Ur and Senet. It dates back to the Egyptian Predynastic Period, dating back to before 3100 BC. and was played for centuries before declining in favor of the more famous Senet, Aseb and Seejeh towards the end of the Old Kingdom, around 2300 BC. Purpose of the game This game, being very ancient and having been played for almost three millennia, has undergone heavy changes in the rules. We have proposed two possible ways of playing, in both the lions play a decisive role, to bring all the pieces to the snake's head or to eat as many of them as possible. A bit of history Mehen literally means "he who is coiled" and refers both to the spiral shape of the game and to the predynastic divinity Mehen, depicted precisely in the form of a serpent that coils up in a spiral to protect the Sun god Ra on his journey through the Duat at night as a shield from the attacks of the god of chaos, the serpent Apophis. Towards the end of the Old Kingdom the divine figure of Mehen decayed, leaving Apophis as the only serpent-shaped deity and the role of protector of Ra during the journey to the Western Lands passed through various deities: from Sia and Heka even to himself Seth. The meaning of the journey of the Mehen could therefore also have changed, causing the game to change from a journey under the protection of "he who is coiled" to a race against the serpent of Chaos. But these are only hypotheses. Its true uniqueness, compared to other games even from later eras, was that it was multiplayer, pre-selling up to a maximum of six participants. Despite having no archaeological or historiographical evidence that would allow us to trace the original rules, examples of the game have been found accompanied by six pieces in the shape of dogs, hippos or - more commonly - lions and many round pieces, mostly resembling small marbles. The use, of course, was unclear. The confirmation of what the complete Mehen game set was like and, consequently, of the fact that it was for multiple players, we had with the discovery of the Mastaba of Hesy in Saqqara, where a complete set of games is depicted on a fresco from the table, from the Mehen to the Senet, to the Aseb. The Mehen boards found during archaeological excavations are mostly made of terracotta or wood and the number of squares is very variable, from forty to four hundred. However, it seems that the number of squares does not affect the rules of the game, but rather the length of the game. From historiographical and archaeological documentation the Mehen fell into disuse after the Old Kingdom, supplanted by the Senet and the Aseb, but it has not been completely forgotten since in 1925, the English colonial administrator Reginald Davies recorded the "Hyena Game" played from the locals in northern Sudan and from the analysis of Davies' texts it closely resembles the Mehen with the aim of having all six pieces reach the central well. We extrapolated the rules mainly from the adaptation of Davies' writings implemented by the researcher and historian Timothy Kendall, in his article "Mehen: The Ancient Egyptian Game of the Serpent". Other details You can find the rules for playing on the website www.ludendocere.it in the "Rules" section.