Queen Nefertari Playing Senet 1279 BC

This is Nina de Garis Davies’s facsimile of Queen Nefertari Playing Senet, now held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Here, we see Nefertari, wife of Pharaoh Ramesses II, engaged in a game of Senet. But this is no mere pastime. The game board, in ancient Egypt, symbolized the journey of the soul through the afterlife. Note how Nefertari's poised hand hovers over the pieces, a gesture that evokes the scales of judgment, weighing her worthiness for passage into eternity. Across cultures, the act of ‘playing’ has been a symbolic bridge to the divine—think of the chess games in medieval allegories, representing the cosmic dance of fate and free will. In Nefertari’s Senet, the game embodies the soul’s quest for eternal life, a potent symbol of hope and existential yearning resonating across millennia. This visual motif echoes through time, capturing our primal fears and hopes related to death.