Hounds and Jackals - Rules, History & Strategy Guide

Hounds and Jackals appeared in Egypt around 2000 BC, during the Middle Kingdom, and its nickname, the game of 58 holes, comes from the two private 29-hole tracks drilled into its boards. The most famous set was excavated by Howard Carter at Thebes: a palm-tree shaped board with five ivory pegs carved as hound heads and five as jackal heads, now one of the treasures of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The game travelled far beyond the Nile. Boards have been found across Mesopotamia, the Levant, and Anatolia, carved into palace floors and scratched onto bricks, and it stayed in play for roughly a millennium before fading. Modern players use a straightforward reconstruction: the tracks, links between holes, and marked lucky holes are all visible on the surviving boards, and casting sticks stand in for the knucklebones some sets used.

Hounds and Jackals is a pure race: each player runs five pegs down a private 29-hole track, and the first to bring all five home wins. There is no capturing; shortcuts and extra throws decide the race.

1. Throw four casting sticks: the light faces up count 1 to 4, and all dark faces count 5.
2. Enter a peg on the hole matching your throw, or advance one peg already on your track by the full value.
3. Land exactly on a linked hole to slide forward along the carved path (hole 6 leads to 20, hole 8 to 10).
4. Throws of 1, 4 and 5 grant another throw, as does landing exactly on a starred nefer hole (15 or 25).
5. A peg leaves the board only on an exact throw past hole 29; the first player to run all five pegs off wins.

• Treat the 6-to-20 link as the main prize of the opening: fourteen free holes for landing exactly on hole 6.
• Keep your pegs spaced. Your own pegs block exact landings, and a clustered team wastes its best throws.
• Chain bonuses deliberately: a throw of 1, 4 or 5 that also lands on a nefer hole gives back-to-back extra throws.
• Stagger the endgame: park pegs 1 to 5 holes from the exit at different distances so any throw bears one off.
• Enter pegs early. A peg still in the kennel late in the game turns big throws into dead throws.

Surviving boards differ in their links: some connect different hole pairs or mark different lucky holes, and archaeologists suspect regional house rules. Some sets used knucklebones (astragali) instead of casting sticks, giving slightly different odds. Arcadia follows the most common reconstruction based on the Met board: links at 6-20 and 8-10, nefer holes at 15 and 25, and stick throws matching Senet for familiarity.