Rise of Waset

How to play

Build quarries on the desert and a harbour beside the river to gather stone and gold. Fields on the black earth feed your people, houses give you workers, and a bakery and a temple keep Ma'at, the balance of the city, from falling. A scribe school unlocks the workers' village and the monuments; then place your pyramid and fund it, stage by stage, until it is complete.

The three seasons of the Nile

The Egyptian year was divided into three seasons of four months, all shaped by the river: Akhet, the inundation, when the Nile flooded the fields; Peret, the growing season, when crops were sown in the wet soil; and Shemu, the harvest. A low flood meant a poor harvest, a high one could sweep away houses and dykes. In the game the Nilometer gives you a forecast before each inundation, as the real nilometers along the river once helped officials predict the year ahead.

History in the game

Each building you complete for the first time unlocks a short fact, with a link to the full story on this site, from the logbook of Merer and the Great Pyramid to the temples ofKarnak. The game compresses many centuries into a single city, so it is a playful blend of periods rather than a reconstruction of ancient Waset (Thebes). For the real chronology, see thetimeline.

Your city is saved in this browser only. The daily challenge gives every player the same floods and events on a given day.

More to explore

Want to see how the Great Pyramid itself could have been built? Try the Pyramid Builder Lab: choose a ramp theory, a workforce and wet or dry sand, and find out which step slows the work down. Or fly over theValley of the Kings in 3D, across the river from Waset, where the pharaohs of the New Kingdom were buried.