Egyptian Games and Sports (Shire Egyptology)

The Ancient Egyptians were a fun-loving people who enjoying a wide range of sports and games. While the young men chased lions and ostriches across the desert, dignified husbands and wives relaxed over a game of senet, their children played with balls and dolls and entire families spent the day hunting fowl in the marshes. Egyptian kings took their own physical fitness and sporting prowess very seriously-as living demi-gods they expected to dominate on the sports field just as they dominated in every other sphere of Egyptian life. Sport even played an important role in Egyptian ritual, with aging kings required to demonstrate, by running a race, their continuing fitness to rule. This book traces the evidence for sport and games from Predynastic times to the end of the New Kingdom, combining archaeological, pictorial and textual sources to bring Egyptian leisure time to life. Different chapters consider athletics, hunting, martial arts and the female-dominated sports of acrobatics and dance. The board games, which played such an important role in Egyptian family life, are explored in detail-can we tell how these games were played?-and popular children's games and toys are described.