Author's Note- When I was growing up, one of my elementary school teachers made us play Senet as part of our Ancient Egypt unit and the fact she was perfect okay with explaining rules to a dead game always puzzled me. I can totally see Egypt taking advantage of this for his own amusement. Oh, and before I forget a huge thank you to GermanFanfictionfan and Missingwings for your review of the last chapter. Glad you had fun with it.
Disclaimer- I do not own Hetalia, and like Egypt I also have no clue how Senet was originally played so I looked up a number of Senet historians (yes they do exist) hypothesis about the rules for this story.
Senet
Everyone assumed that there had been games that came before. There had probably also been board games that came before, Senet was simply too complex of a game to have been created in a vacuum, but today it was the oldest board game known to mankind and Egypt was incredibly proud of that. The fact that the nation literally had no clue how the game was played wasn't going to stop him from continuing the proud tradition.
The first step in reviving the game was to study the historical record for clues. There were several tomb murals which depicted pairs of people moving pieces around the table sized board. There were hieroglyphics explaining the importance of Senet as one of the essential skills in navigating the afterlife. There were even crude boards on the top of walls, which masons and other workman appeared to have played whenever they were taking a break from work. Still, compared with all of those other versions of those fragments of game play, the most helpful were the beautifully carved sets that were placed in the tombs of the Pharaohs for their use in the afterlife.
The next task was to locate a board. By far this was the simplest one to complete. All Egypt had to do was go to downtown Cairo and purchase a spectacular enough looking set from one of the vendors. It took a bit of haggling, but in time Egypt had even gotten it for a price he was willing to pay.
The last step in reviving an ancient game was to find an opponent. In Egypt's case there was only one logical choice, one of the Italy. While most of the world tended to view the Italians as stubborn and a bit dull witted, that was really giving the pair a poor reputation. While they tended to be oblivious to many things in the present they had an innate love of anything that came from the past.
"I win." Egypt smiled ruthful at his opponent. "Want to play again?"
The African nation would also end up winning the next 15 games about Italy, leaving the other nation scratching their head on why they couldn't get the upper hand. What Egypt would never admit was one of the advantages of playing a dead game was that you could always tweak the rules to be in your favor and no one would ever be the wiser.
Historical Note- The first record of the game Senet, which translates to game of passing, shows up in the hieroglyphs around 3100 BC, about the same time that Upper and Lower Egypt were unified. It was also played as late as 400 AD well after when the Romans had concurred Egypt. It finally fell out of popular favor when Christianity came to the region and the games pagan context turned it from being a necessity to learn to a game people were uncomfortable playing it.
End Note- Well if you make up the rules, you might as well make up rules that help you win.
Next Chapter- A Sailor Went to Sea, Sea, Sea- The standard clapping game is a bit boring for Canada and America when they were growing up. They chose to do epic clapping games instead…much to England's dismay.