Senet
Senet is one of the oldest known board games. Fragmentary boards that could be senet have been found in First Dynasty burials in Egypt, c. 3100 BC. A hieroglyph resembling a senet board appears in the tomb of Merknera (3300–2700 BC). The first unequivocal painting of this ancient game is from the Third Dynasty tomb of Hesy (c. 2686–2613 BC). People are depicted playing senet in a painting in the tomb of Rashepes, as well as from other tombs of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties (c. 2500 BC). The oldest intact senet boards date to the Middle Kingdom, but graffiti on Fifth and Sixth Dynasty monuments could date as early as the Old Kingdom.
At least by the time of the New Kingdom in Egypt (1550–1077 BC), senet was conceived as a representation of the journey of the ka (the vital spark) to the afterlife. This connection is made in the Great Game Text, which appears in a number of papyri, as well as the appearance of markings of religious significance on senet boards themselves. The game is also referred to in chapter XVII of the "Book of the Dead".
History of games
First patented in 1904, "The Landlord's Game", designed by Elizabeth Magie, was originally intended to illustrate the economic consequences of Ricardo's Law of Economic rent and the Georgist concept of a single tax on land value. A series of board games were developed from 1906 through the 1930s that involved the buying and selling of land and the development of that land. By 1933, a board game had been created much like the version of modern Monopoly by the Parker Brothers. 
Though the first commercial version of the game of Battleship was "Salvo", published in 1931 in the United States by the Starex company, the game itself dates to before World War I when it was played on paper by Russian officers. The French board game "L'Attaque" was first commercially released in 1910, having been designed two years prior as a military-themed imperfect knowledge game based upon the earlier Chinese children's board game Dou Shou Qi. "L'Attaque" was subsequently adapted by the Chinese into Luzhanqi (or "Lu Zhan Jun Qi"), and by Milton Bradley into Stratego, the latter having been trademarked in 1960 while the former remains in the public domain. Jury Box, published in 1935, was the first murder mystery game which served as the basis for games like Cluedo.