Like all the people of great civilisations, the Ancient Egyptians loved to play games and gamble. They did not have dice to play craps, tables to play roulette or cards for Texas Hold’em poker and they certainly didn’t have any triple paying free spin round based casino slots. So what does history tell us about the games that Ancient Egyptians liked to play around the time of the great queen Cleopatra?

Well, some examples of games that the Egyptians loved to play have managed to escape the corrosion of time. We know that they played a game very similar to our modern day game of checkers and draughts called pwer, this could possibly be one of the very early ancestors of our modern game of chess.

Another game that was incredibly popular was senet, a game played with brightly coloured counters and sticks that mirrored the story of the Egyptian’s story of the soul descending into the underworld. One game that senet is incredibly similar too in our opinion is backgammon, which is now a world famous game that people simply love to gamble on. Another game that we know was popular all those years ago is dogs and jackals (sometimes called hounds and jackals), which was made popular in the Hollywood classic “The Ten Commandments”. Although we have some excellent examples of these games, recovered from tombs and smaller, late dynasty pyramids we still to this day do not have an idea of the rules although it is believed we have a good idea as to what they might have been.

We’ve played a few online versions of some of these Egyptian classics and all we can say is that we’re glad that gaming has now evolved to the point where we have internet casinos and poker rooms, because in our humble opinion some of these games are incredibly boring and simple.

We’d much rather be playing our favourite Ancient Egyptian themed slots like the Cleopatra 2 Slot or the stupendous Cleopatra Megajackpots than gambling in old Egypt.