The Ancient Egyptians enjoyed a variety of different sports, which is evident in paintings and drawings on Pharaonic monuments and in ancient documents. They show that several thousand years ago, the Egyptians had laid down basic rules for the games, chosen a neutral referee, a uniform for players, and a means of announcing the winners by awarding them different collars.

These special collars, known as the usekh, half covered the shoulders and chest. Both winner and loser were met with ovation, the first for his superiority and the latter for his sporting spirit.

Ancient Egyptian royalty and high officials enjoyed attending sports competitions which were considered an exciting form of entertainment. Boxing, wrestling, and fencing with sticks were favourite events.

The ancient Egyptians also held a form of early Olympics featuring field hockey, handball, gymnastics comprised of floor exercises and consecutive vaults, weightlifting, equestrian competitions, swimming, rowing, archery, javelin throwing, long distance running, high jump, and tug of war.

Children played less organised games involving balancing, wrestling, and racing as well as games with balls made from papyrus.
It is apparent that sport must have been a part of the daily life and culture in ancient Egypt. Archaeologists and scholars have uncovered interesting information about the ancient Egyptian sports practised thousands of years ago and as sporting artefacts have been found in tombs, sport was evidently included in the preparations for the afterlife.

Not unlike modern societies, sport in ancient Egypt also served the purpose of improving physical health and well-being, as well as providing unifying elements for national cultures. One popular competitive sport was the tug of hoop, the ultimate purpose of which was to secure a single hoop from an opponent with a stick. The hoop could not hit the floor, which made the challenge more difficult in that it required intensive concentration and quick reflexes. Another activity was the equilibrium which was non-competitive activity with the aim of promoting balance between people and within the individual to gain harmony. There were usually four players in the sport. Two primary players stretched their limbs by holding on to two secondary players that provided a stabilising force for the primary players.

The sport was good for health reasons, as it entailed stretching and muscle work to enhance the individual’s balance and to perfect the individual’s mental health, balance and well-being.

The sports included an assortment of ball games. One of the games involving ball play appears to be a version of handball, while other games were played using balls and bats fashioned from palm trees. Though these ball games probably never reached the frenzied state of popularity as they exist in the modern world, ball games appear to have been enjoyed by children and adults alike.

Many sports seem to have been enjoyed for the pure fun; while others might have developed into professional spectator sporting events.

In addition, ancient Egypt sports included lengthy 34 Sports and Fitness/August 2008
marathons that were recorded in a number of ancient Egyptian texts.

Marathons seem to have even played a part in the coronation festivities of Pharaohs throughout most ancient Egyptian history.

They were also used to improve the fitness and stamina of the military.

The origins of the 100 kilometre Pharaonic Race from Fayoum to Saqqara, which is run annually in November can be traced back two and a half millennia to the days of Taharqa, the fourth ruler of the 25th Dynasty, 690-664 BC.

The son and third successor of King Piye, Taharqa was the greatest of the Nubian Pharaohs and is referred to in the Bible (Isaiah 37:9 and Kings 19:9) as King of Ethiopia with an empire stretching from Palestine to the confluence of the Blue and White Niles.
By the age of 20, Taharqa was a great warrior who fought and won many battles against the Assyrians, but soon the Assyrians overwhelmed the Egyptian and Kushite forces in 667 BC, at which time Nubia lost control of Egypt.

 In 1977, a discovery was made throwing light on Taharqa’s strategy to build up his army to overpower the Assyrian occupation. An army officer informed the late Ahmed Moussa, then director of the Saqqara site, about a stone with inscriptions still stored in an army camp.

The interpretation on the hieroglyphs revealed an exciting story.

The aim of accessing the strength off his soldiers, Taharq prescribed a 100 kilometre training competition and that the distance was completed in just over eight hours proving the fitness of his men.

The Nile River was the centre of life in ancient Egypt but a fish was never a primary part of the diet and as other natural resources were available for food and trade, fishing was primarily done for sport. Likewise, archery was a very popular sports recreation; although it seems to have been practised more by royalty for entertainment purposes than for practical means but javelin throwing was associated with hunting for both sport and the provision of food.

 With the fact that Egypt lies on the banks of the Nile River it is quite likely to assume that many of the ancient Egyptian sports were water-related and there is evidence that indicates that Egyptians enjoyed swimming and rowing.

The ancient Egyptians also enjoyed games of strategy and chance in which pieces were moved on specially designed boards. One game involving six lions and six sets of balls, played from the pre-dynastic to early Old Kingdom, was called mehen. Another game, called hounds and jackals, appears to be a race between a team of five jackals and five hounds
around a palm tree, but little is known about the rules of these games.

The most popular game was senet. A precursor of checkers, senet was played on a checkered board of three rows of ten squares. The object of the game was to move the pieces around a snaking track to the finish. Specially marked squares indicated good or bad fortune.

Scenes from tombs and temples in all periods show musicians and dancers. Musical performances were important to the cults of the deities and kings and the Egyptians used a variety of instruments, including drums, flutes, harps, tambourines and trumpets.

Dancing was considered an honourable career for a woman and probably required a great degree of grace and athleticism to perform the acrobatic movements depicted in temple scenes.

Throwing stone balls along a lane might have been a popular game in ancient Egypt, according to evidence unearthed by Italian archaeologists last summer. The game was a mixture of bowling, billiards and lawn bowls and was played at Narmoutheos, in the Fayoum region, some 90 kilometres south of Cairo.

It was played in a spacious room that seems to be the prototype of a modern bowling hall.
New discoveries are being made on a constant basis, so who knows which other precursors of today’s sports will be accredited to the ancient Egyptians in the future.
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