Christmas is the time when many of us get boardgames of various kinds. I have to confess that I get horribly competitive at boardgames, be they something as complex as Monopoly or even as simple as Snakes and Ladders... Years ago some friends, knowing my interest in all things Egyptian, bought me "The Hieroglyphs Game", which is known in this family as "The Scarab Game" or more frequently "There's No Way I'm Playing you at That Game because you Turn into a Competitive Monster" which may be pushing it a bit far, but only slightly... Anyway, in ancient Egypt itself they had an interest in boardgames, and particularly one called Senet which, it has been suggested, is perhaps the oldest boardgame in the world and might actually be the progenitor of backgammon. It frequently appears in the illustrations of the "Book of the Dead" and Senet sets were often included in the funerary gifts for the deceased. Some suggest this is because being "...
Dialogues, monologues, sketches, poems, rants, theological and liturgical bits and bobs and miscellaneous other verbal doodles...