Spool-Shaped Game Piece

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The first room that the Museum's excavators cleared in the family tomb of Neferkhawet was the east chamber. In the northwest corner of this room they found a mis-matched partial set of gaming pieces. The two types, conical and spool-shaped, are common components of the board games senet and 20-squares which were usually combined in a single game box with the game boards on opposite sides, and a drawer for the gaming pieces and the throw sticks or knuckle bones that were used like dice to determine how the pieces were moved on the boards. The eight gaming pieces, five conical and three spool-shaped, were lying on their sides next to the outlined remains of an insect-eaten game box.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met collection of ancient Egyptian art consists of approximately 30,000 objects of artistic, historical, and cultural importance, dating from about 300,000 BCE to the 4th century CE. A signifcant percentage of the collection is derived from the Museum's three decades of archaeological work in Egypt, initiated in 1906 in response to increasing interest in the culture of ancient Egypt.

Metropolitan Museum of Art