Note: The images on this homepage and
subsequent pages are copyrighted: copyright 1996 P.S. Neeley, all
rights reserved.
May the king of
Egypt be gracious to me,
that I may live
on his grace.
May I greet the
Mistress of the Land who is in his palace,
and hear the
behests of her children. Then may my limbs grow young again;
for old age has
descended;
weakness has
overtaken me,
my eyes are
heavy and my arms faint;
my legs fail to
follow, my heart weary;
I am near to
death!
May they conduct
me to the Cities of Eternity,
may I follow the
Lady to the Limit,
Then may she
tell me that all is well with her children;
may she traverse
eternity over me!
(From the 'Tale
of Sinuhe')
Hounds & Jackals for Windows
Board games were immensely popular games in ancient Egypt --
two of these, Senet and a game we can only refer to as 'The
twenty squares game' were played from 3000 B.C. and are some of
the oldest known games. But around 1300 B.C., another game, whose
Egyptian name is lost in antiquity, appears in the record and is
known today by Egyptologists only as the 'Hounds & Jackals'
game because of its unique hound and jackal headed playing
pieces.
'Hounds & Jackals' is a distinctively Egyptian game that
appears to have spread from Egypt into surrounding areas
controlled or influenced by the ancient Egyptian empire. It is
also the earliest known example, and possible the original form,
of the 'Snakes and Ladders' game, and thus has particular appeal
since these types of game are even today among the most popular
games of chance.
The game is a race game between a team of five Jackals and a
team of five Hounds (originally peg playing pieces) around a palm
tree or oasis and along a peculiar shaped 'Track' (originally a
series of peg holes in a playing board). The object of the game
being to get your five pieces around the track and onto the
'Shen' hieroglyph -- which means 'encircling' or 'surrounding all
that exists'. The game requires strategy in the face of whimsical
chance, the chance coming from the throw of two knucklebones
which were an ancient form of dice.
'Hounds & Jackals' is probably the most 'Egyptian' of
games in the popular view and is readily recognized as 'Egyptian'
by many, otherwise normal, people ;- ) This is no doubt because
of the distinctive look of the game and also because Hollywood
has immortalized it in its movies -- a good example being the
charming sequence of a game between Seti and Nefertari about 34
minutes into 'The Ten Commandments'.
'Hounds & Jackals' was played in Egypt for more than 1800
years. Now it is here again in the present, re-created through
the magic of electrons and phosphorus, for you to play.
Welcome to a game of the ancients -- Seti, Nefertari, Ramses
the Great, and now you!
Will you have the courage to face the 'glitter
in the dunes' and the sinister power of an ancient and evil gift
from a Nubian sorcerer to the Pharaoh?
Download it right from here ( hj.zip --
632 Kb)
Interested in just the rules and history of the game?
Then download just the Windows Help file if
you'd like.
Note: This program requires VBRUN300.DLL
to exist on your system.
Looking for 'Ancient Egypt' on the Web? Any of the following
are great starting points:
