Ancient Egypt

Anubis City is a game, not a museum, but a lot of it comes straight from ancient Egypt. Our coins are named after the deben, the weight in which Egyptians priced goods. All 50 ranks are real titles, from commoner to vizier. The halls are dedicated to real gods. This section sorts the history from the invention.

We chose Egypt for its love of games. Few ancient peoples took them so seriously: senet boards went into graves for more than fifteen centuries, and Tutankhamun took several game boxes with him into eternity. Egypt even had a “city of the dog”: the Greeks gave the name Kynopolis to a town in Middle Egypt where Anubis was worshipped. Ours is made up — you will not find it on any map.

• Real. The fifty ranks — titles from inscriptions, each with a short history in the game. The deben as a measure of value. The gods our halls are named after: Anubis, Thoth, Seshat, Shai, Hathor, Ra and Horus. Pylons, papyrus columns, obelisks, cartouches, benches on lion legs like the furniture from Tutankhamun’s tomb. Senet boards scratched into the street slabs: Egyptians scratched them into stone too, even on temple roofs.
• Made up. The city itself. The games behind the doors: poker, blackjack, roulette, bingo and slot machines are a few centuries old at most, not a few thousand years. Debens as coins: Egyptians priced things in debens but paid in goods, and struck their first coins only in the 4th century BC. The ankh as money. Ra’s Boat bringing debens to the quay. A golden dome over a temple — Egyptian temples had flat roofs.

If you play, start with the ranks: you will see who your current title was in Egypt and how much experience the next one takes. Ancient Egyptian clothing shows the twenty outfits of the Wardrobe and the museum pieces behind them. The deben shows what a goat or a coffin cost in the village of the tomb builders. With the hieroglyph tool you can write your name in a cartouche and download the picture. Senet gives one set of rules you can play today, and the games of ancient Egypt cover the rest, from the snake board of mehen to juggling balls. The patrons of our halls have a section of their own.