Not Gaming Pieces After All - They're 'Toilet Paper'

This is hilarious!

'They would have been a bit scratchy': The ceramic 'gaming pieces' that new research claims were a Roman equivalent to loo roll

• The flat, disc-shaped relics were unearthed in West Sussex in 1960
• British Medical Journal article proposed their personal hygiene function
• Museum curator says he doubts they would have been comfortable to use

By Damien Gayle
PUBLISHED:06:59 EST, 18 January 2013| UPDATED:10:57 EST, 18 January 2013


Ancient artefacts thought to be early gaming pieces will have to be reclassified after new research which claims they were actually used to wipe bottoms.

The flat, disc-shaped Roman relics have been in the collection at Fishbourne Roman Palace in Chichester, West Sussex, since the Sixties.  Up until now museum experts thought the items were used for early games like draughts, but an article in the British Medical Journal has now proposed that they have a very different function.

It is well publicised that Romans used sponges mounted on sticks and dipped in vinegar as an alternative to toilet paper.

Yet the idea these ceramic discs might also have been used for such personal hygiene is a revelation.
The broken pieces - known as 'pessoi', meaning pebbles - range in size from 1in to 4in in diameter and were excavated near to the museum in 1960.

Experts said these were game pieces -- pessoi.  Turned out to be stones
used to scrape feces off one's butt.
  

Carved ivory piece excavated at
Butrint, Albania, 2002.  Experts
say this is NOT a chess piece.
Yeah, you're always right...

It had been thought that they were chips used to play an ancient game, also known as 'pessoi', but research published last month in the BMJ drew from classical sources to present evidence that they were also used to clean up after going to the toilet.

Noting the ancient Greek proverb 'three stones are enough to wipe one's a***', Philippe Charlier, assistant professor in forensic medicine at the Raymond Poincaré University Hospital in Paris, points to archaeological excavations which have uncovered pessoi inside the pits of Greek and Roman latrines across the Mediterranean.

In one such dig in Athens, American archaeologists found a range of such pessoi 1.2-4in in diameter and 0.2-0.8in thick which, Professor Charlier wrote, were 're-cut from old broken ceramics to give smooth angles that would minimise anal trauma'.

Other evidence from the classical world has been passed down to us in the form of ceramics painted with representations of figures using pessoi to clean their buttocks.

According to Professor Charlier's article, the Greeks and Romans even inscribed some of their pessoi with the names of their enemies or others they didn't like.  Thus everytime they went to the toilet they would literally be wiping their faecal matter on the names of hated individuals. Examples of such stones have been found by archaeologists bearing the names of such noted historical figures as Socrates, Themisthocles and Pericles, Professor Charlier reported.

Museum curator Dr Rob Symmons said: 'When pottery like this is excavated it is someone's job to wash it clean. So, some poor and unsuspecting archaeologist has probably had the delight of scrubbing some Roman waste off of these pieces.  It is not beyond the realms of possibility that we could still find some further signs of waste or residue. 'However, these pottery pieces have no monetary value because we are essentially talking about items once used as toilet roll.

'The pieces had always been catalogued as as broken gaming pieces but I was never particularly happy with that explanation.  But when the article produced the theory they were used to wipe people's bums I thought it was hilarious and it just appealed to me.  I love the idea we've had these in the museum for 50 years being largely ignored and now they are suddenly engaging items you can relate to.'

Dr Charlier's research indicates that the use of such stones would have probably been rather hard on the rear ends of the ancients, and could have caused a variety of medical issues. [Gee, ya think?]
He suggests the abrasive texture of the pessoi could have led to skin irritation, mucosal damage, or complications of external haemorrhoids.

He wrote: 'Maybe this crude and satiric description by Horace in his 8th epode (1st century BC) — “an a*** at the centre of dry and old buttocks mimicking that of a defecating cow”— refers to complications arising from such anal irritation.'
Dr Symmons, who has been at the Fishbourne Roman Palace museum for seven years, added: 'We will obviously have to think about re-classifying these objects on our catalogue.

'But we hope the pieces will make people smile when they learn what they were used for.  They would have probably been quite scratchy to use and I doubt they would be as comfortable as using toilet roll.  But in the Roman era it was that or very little else.'

Chess Invented in Bulgaria?

I didn't think it was possible but FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has made an utter ass of himself in this article.  Well, he has been an ass for a long time, but now he's growing ears and a tail too, geez!  Read the pronouncements of the Man Who Visits With Aliens:

From novinite.com
Bulgaria Possible Place of Origin of Chess
Sports | November 4, 2010, Thursday

The Bulgarian city of Plovdiv is one of the plausibly suspected places of origin of chess, according to the President of the international chess federation FIDE Kirsan Ilyumzhinov.

In an interview for the Russian Kommersant daily, Ilyumzhinov explains that during his stay in Bulgaria in October he discussed with the heads of the Bulgarian Chess Federation the possibilities for staging the first international conference on history and origins of chess, to be hosted by the city of Sofia.

The FIDE states that India is only one possible places of origin of chess.

"This is one version. But do you know that ancient chess pieces have been found in Plovdiv? And this is one of the oldest cities in Europe. There are still theories about which country is the birthplace of chess. We first talked about India, then - about Persia. Last year I was in Mongolia, and its president showed me chess pieces found found in the tomb of Genghis Khan and the excavated burial mound. Check out their approximate age - they turned out to be 3 500 years old. The oldest chess pieces in India are maximum 2000 years old ... Chess pieces have also been found in Latin America, in Peru. How did they end up there?" Ilyumzhinov asked.

He said the first ever scientific conference on the history of chess will take place in Sofia but did not specify when.

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There are so many things wrong with this article - but here are some major outright WRONG items in this article:

(1) As far as I'm aware, Genghis Khan's tomb has not been found, so it could not possibly have been excavated, unless it was done so illegally.  If it has been discovered and excavated, where were the headlines?

(2) Where are photographs of whatever it is the President of Mongolia says are chess pieces recovered from Genghis Khan's tomb?  It would be nice, too, to see the scientific analyses that date these alleged chess pieces to 3500 years ago.

(3) What chess pieces were discovered in Plovdiv?  Never heard about it.  I keep my ear pretty close to the ground - where is the article?

(4) A FIDE sponsored international conference on the origins of chess would not be the first international conference on the origins of chess. There have been several international conferences of scholars, archaelogists, games historians, historians, mathematicians, and interested amateurs (such as yours truly) that have addressed the origins and history of chess - none sponsored by FIDE - thank Goddess!

(5) What chess pieces discovered in South America? Never heard about it.

(6) An announcement that a new ancient chess piece has been discovered is a big deal.  Remember the itnernational coverage the chess piece discovered at Butrint received back in 2002 (photo, right)?  Chess historians crawled out of the woodwork to condemn the archaelogists who excavated the chess piece for calling it - a chess piece!  Whatever you think the Butrint chess piece may be (oh, excuse me, I should call it the Butrint artifact), there was plenty of hoo ha raised when it was announced.  Indeed, some people came forward expressing opinions whom I thought had died years ago - such is the power of an announcement that a new ancient chess piece has been discovered!  

Mr. Ilyumzhinov - SHOW US THE CHESS PIECES!

For further information on the Butrint chess piece - er - ancient artifact, see:

The Butrint Icon in Vivisection - Part 1 at Goddesschess

The Butrint Icon in Vivisection - Part 2 at Goddesschess

What's the Oldest Evidence of Chess? - Part 2

The archaeologists' conclusion that the Butrint artifact was a chess piece drew gasps of horror from most traditionalist chess historians. The Butrint artifact cannot be chess, they say, because chess may not have even been invented at the time; furthermore, they say, since there is only one such piece, it could be anything - it is probably a "finial."

It's doubtful that anyone will ever be able to pinpoint an exact date when chess was invented. However, that hasn't stopped people from trying! In the late 19th and early part of the 20th centuries, it was practically stated as fact that chess was invented in what is now part of Pakistan (pre-partition historians refer to this area as "northern India"), sometime during the 6th century CE. This date is used in H.J.R. Murray's work "A History of Chess," which is basically a chess historian's bible, and has been repeated ad nauseum on the internet. Since Murray's time, though, the possible date of the invention of chess has been pushed back a bit and most chess historians now accept a date somewhere in the middle to late 5th century CE. Well, guess where that puts the invention of chess - between 450 to 500 CE. According to news reports at the time of the discovery, the Butrint king is securely dated to 465 CE because of a distinctive type of Roman pottery found in the same level of ruins and some recovered coins.

What does current published archaeological and literary evidence reveal as to how old chess is?

The earliest "unambiguous" written reference to chess is, according to the traditionalists, in the Pahlavi (middle Persian) work Wizârišn î chatrang ud nihišm î nêw-ardaxšîr (The explanation of Chess and the invention of Nard), also called "Mâdayân î chatrang" or simply named "Chatrang nâmag" (The Book of Chess, per Murray), dating to about 600-620 CE.

Other than the Butrint piece, currently the earliest known chesspieces (chatrang pieces) were found at Afrasiab, near Samarkand in Uzbekistan. Those pieces are a king, chariot, vizier, horse (knight-image above), elephant, and two soldiers, all made of ivory. The Afrasiab discovery is significant because the number of pieces found and their configuration allowed chess historians to unequivocally declare that they were, indeed, chess pieces, albeit of the "figural" kind. That the pieces were figural and not abstract could reasonably suggest that the pieces are pre-Islamic, because of Islam's emphasis on not making "images" of living things.

The Afrasiab pieces are dated to about 760 AD because a coin, dated to 761 CE, was found with the chesspieces. The chess pieces could not, therefore, be any younger than the coin, but they could be older than the coin. This assumes that the excavated layer had not previously been disturbed, so that there is no possibility that the coin could have been introduced into a much earlier (or later, for that matter), layer of archaeological deposit.

H.J.R. Murray said that northwest India (ancient "Hind") was where chess originated, and for the better part of the 20th century, most agreed with him. However, there are other possibilities. A strong case can be made that proto-chess first arose in ancient China. There are literary references to such a game that predate the "Chatrang namag" by a couple hundred years. The great scholar Joseph Needham was of the opinion that chess was a Chinese invention. See his comments at Goddesschess (a large PDF file, will be slow-loading for dial-up users).

And our Chief, the late Ricardo Calvo, suggested that Persia itself might be the home of chess. See his comments at Goddesschess. I have been researching rather obscure and esoteric matters Persian that might support this hypothesis for the past several years. A woman's work is never done...

What's the Oldest Evidence of Chess?

There’s an old saying "If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it is probably a duck."

That’s why some of us Goddesschess folks believe that this little piece (approximately 1.5 inches tall) is a chess piece, probably a king. It was identified as a chess piece (a king or queen) by the archaeologists who excavated it in July, 2002 during an ongoing dig at the cultural heritage site of Butrint, Albania, and dates to approximately 465 CE.

The assertion that this piece was a chess piece caused quite an uproar within the insular and sedate world of chess historians. More about this tomorrow.