Mehen

Descripción

In the 1920s, anthropologists, explorers and adventurers found a curious spiral-tracked game being played by the Baggara Arabs of the Sudan —Li'b el Merafib, “The Hyena Game”. In all essential details the "Hyena Game" seems to have been identical to the Ancient Egyptian game of Mehen (The Game of the Coiled One). The board's shape suggests it may be a distant ancestor of the Game of Goose but the mechanics are so different that this is probably a coincidence. It was played on a spiraling track, employed stick dice (throwing sticks) of precisely the kind known from Archaic Egyptian contexts, and had two types of pieces, one representing a predatory animal. The only diffe…