800 Year Old Islamic Style Chess Piece Excavated in Norway

From Newsweek Online Magazine

ANCIENT CHESS PIECE WITH ISLAMIC DESIGNS DISCOVERED IN NORWAY, BAFFLING ARCHAEOLOGISTS

BY SYDNEY PEREIRA ON 1/29/18 AT 11:36 AM

People have been playing chess for centuries—but a new chess piece found in Norway further reveals the spread of the ancient game to the Nordic region, and provides some intriguing insights about the game's history. An 800-year-old chess piece was excavated at a site in Norway, covered with a unique pattern of circles. The piece depicts a horse-like figure, but in today’s game it would be known as the knight.

Just before Christmas, archaeologists from the Norwegian Institute of Cultural Heritage (NIKU) excavated the one-inch tall piece in a 13th-century house in Tønsberg, which is Norway's oldest city. What makes this piece particularly interesting is its unique Arabian pattern and abstract shape, according to NIKU.

The piece made of an antler is covered with circular designs.LARS HAUGESTEN/NORWEGIAN INSTITUTE OF CULTURAL HERITAGE RESEARCH

“The design of the piece has an abstract shape, and is designed according to Islamic tradition, where no human figures are to be depicted,” Lars Haugesten, project manager for the excavation, said in a statement. Rather, it is decorated with tiny circles and a protruding 'snout' on the top with two dotted circles. The piece is made from an antler, and a chunk of lead was likely placed in the middle of the piece to help it stand up firmly on a chessboard, according to NIKU.

The medieval knight piece has a protruding snout on the top with two dotted circles.LARS HAUGESTEN/NORWEGIAN INSTITUTE OF CULTURAL HERITAGE RESEARCH
"No previous archaeological finds from Tønsberg have such details, which emphasizes that this chess piece is a unique object," Haugesten said.

The medieval chess piece is one of a handful of 'knight' pieces discovered in Norway.

NORWEGIAN INSTITUTE OF CULTURAL HERITAGE RESEARCH

The ancient form of chess, called shatranj, helped archaeologists determine that the piece appears to be a horse, which would be a knight in today's game. Chess likely spread to the Nordic region by the last half of the 12th century, according to Haugesten. The game was played in the Arab world after the conquest of Persia in the 7th century and spread to Spain in the 10th century by the Moors. From Spain, it spread northwards to Scandinavia. The oldest find from the Nordic region was Lund, Sweden—a chess piece similar to the latest artifact from Tønsberg. 

...  Knight pieces are few and far between when it comes to medieval finds. Over 1,000 game pieces in general have been found in Bergen, another city in Norway, alone, but only six abstract knights such as this one have been excavated, according to Haugesten. "In Norway, some chess pieces from the Middle Ages have been found, but few similar knights," Haugesten said.

A Rambling Post About the Nimrud Ivories

Hola!

I've been pounding away on my ginormous family tree, trying to clean up various things, adding things, trying to figure out a logical way to begin to print off, scan and email its contents to awaiting relatives, and not thinking about the Goddesschess blog at all (don't worry, we are still providing funding for various chess femmes in events and 2016 will see five such events).

While digging around on my now antique but trusty Toshiba laptop with Vista installed on it (which I do NOT want to give up but support is going to end for the Vista operating system next year some time - those Microsoft BASTARDS!) in my photos searching for a family portrait of one of my paternal great-uncles (couldn't find the damn thing to save my life),  I happened upon this gorgeous beauty who was next in the row after the last family tree image:

I've got her labeled as "Nimrud Syrian Court Beauty."  But no date on her, no ID information of where I'd copied her from. 

Hmmmm.  I checked the properties of the image and found I had saved it on June 25, 2011.  Holy Hathor!  That didn't tell me anything, though, other than I'd saved her nearly five years ago. Try to remember an image I saved 5 years ago - when I cannot remember what the hell I hate for supper last night.  Hmmm, come to think of it, I was so busy doing this and that, I did not eat any supper last night.  No wonder my stomach has been growling relentlessly since 3 a.m. 

I wondered where I had found her.  I am pretty sure I saved her because she reminds me of a chess piece!  Could be a Queen, could be a forerunner of the "Vizier" who eventually turned into our mitre-hatted and exclusively male "Bishop."  This image reminds me of another image that, of course - now - I cannot find, it's so old it is probably one of the images I moved from my old Windows XP desktop.  I believe it is now residing on a newer Windows 7 laptop to which I had transferred everything (other than emails) sometime in 2014.  Alas, I subsequently spilled a glass of wine on that Windows 7 Toshiba one day sometime in 2014 and now the keyboard only types backwards when the keys work at all and it is impossible to use it for internet purposes.  I've been intending ever since to take it into a repair place, just have not gotten around to it yet.  It's probably a hopeless cause in any event, and I should just transfer everything from THAT laptop to my current Toshiba laptop that has Windows 10 on it.  I hate that damn Windows 10, though, and so I am hanging back doing any such thing.  Do you think I have attachment issues to "old" operating systems and even older computers?

Back to the image that I can't find:  It is a carving of a goddess with a tower (that looks like a medieval castle tower or keep) upon her head.

I always think of the goddess Car when I think of walls and fortifications, but I do not think the image I recall is a carving of Car.  I believe I found her at an obscure archaeology magazine website whose url I cannot recall.  I will probably find her 10 years from now somewhere in the thousands of images I have stored on my various computers when none of this really matters anymore, because people will have figured out by then for themselves that Chess Is The Game Of The Goddess after mucho new archaeological discoveries and several fresh looks at existing evidence and archaeological finds leads to that inevitable conclusion.

Okay, I can see this post is going to turn into one of my semi-epic journeys into JanXena's Twilight Zone, so get yourself a bottle of wine and a big bowl of munchies and settle in.

Back to attempting to write the meat of this post:  Had I written a post about the Nimrud ivory court beauty pictured above and that was why she was among my saved photos?  I don't remember and right now I'm just too damn lazy to try and do a blog search for her.  Instead, I did an online quicky search for "Nimrud Syrian court beauty" - the lazy person's method, LOL!

Lo and behold -- I found not an eurudite and scholarly post written at Goddesschess but a 2011 article from The UK's "Daily Mail" (I confess, it is one of my favorite places to browse).

I'd no idea - but it turns out famous mystery writer Agatha Christie was married at one time to a famous British archaeologist (in archaeological circles, that is), and she used to help him on his digs.  Among them was a dig or digs that took place in Iraq at the ancient site of Nimrud where they uncovered thousands of fragments of small ivory carvings.  Agatha used her cold cream to gently clean them of muck and dirt.  (Does anyone remember's Ponds's Cold Cream?  I do.  Holy Hathor, I'm getting OLD).

I did a quick perusal of the article I discovered online, but I did not see my particular "Syrian ivory court beauty" although there are so many  ivories in a group photo, it would be difficult to pick her out.  At the very end of the article -- I saw two images that are distinctly Egyptian. 

So - I think to myself - you are getting older Jan, you could be losing your marbles to senility.  Maybe these are not Egyptian at all:

 

 Naaaaah, I assured myself.  Those ivories pictured directly above are definitely Egyptian, NOT Assyrian. The art style, the iconography, cannot be mistaken. They were found in Nimrud and were also sold to the British Museum as part of Agatha Christie's collection of thousands of ivories collected from there. But they are not Assyrian. 

The answer lies in the March 8, 2011 article from The Daily Mail.  Cartloads of these ivories (some gold-covered) were hauled to Nimrud as tribute over years and years, and at the time some parts of Egypt or Egypt-centric settlements were included in the Assyrian empire. Sadly for gold treasure hunters, the Babylonians got to the hoards first, and melted off the gold ages ago.  What archaeologists discovered are what was left behind.

British Museum buys 3,000-year-old ivory carvings Agatha Christie cleaned with her face cream

By Daily Mail Reporter
Updated: 08:36 EST, 8 March 2011

• 6,000-piece collection to go on display in London

She revealed in her autobiography that her face cream was invaluable in cleaning finds on her husband's archaeological digs. 

And now some of the 3,000-year-old carved ivory pieces that the author helped preserve will go on show for the first time.

Almost 6,000 pieces have been bought for £1.17million by the British Museum in London.

They were discovered between 1949 and 1963 at Nimrud in what is now northern Iraq, in an excavation led by Sir Max Mallowan, one of Britain's most celebrated archaeologists.

His first wife, murder-mystery writer Christie, was in the excavation team and is known to have help clean and preserve some of the objects.

'I had my own favourite tools; an orange stick, a very fine knitting needle... and a jar of cosmetic face cream for gently coaxing the dirt out of the crevices, ' she wrote in her autobiography published in 1977, the year after her death.

The ancient objects include decorative ivories for use on wooden furniture, as well as fragments of ivories used on horse trappings, statues and decorative boxes.  Most of the pieces, which date from the 9th to the 7th Century BC, would have been covered with gold leaf and inlaid with prized semi-precious stones such as lapis lazuli.  They were discovered in a royal arsenal within Fort Shalmaneser palace in Nimrud, which was once the capital of the Assyrian empire.

The empire covered swathes of the Middle East, including Iraq, Lebanon, Kuwait, Syria and Jordan, even stretching to cover half of modern-day Egypt. [End of article]

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The mystery of where I found the image of my "Nimrud Syrian court beauty" remains.

UPDATE: March 9, 2016

Hola everyone.  I received a comment responding to this post but it was directed to a different post than this one.  I am publishing it here:

 Musicalbard said...

Hi, I noticed your "Nimrud" artifact and came up with this site for you to check out. http://www.d-alyasmen.com/alhalm/part2/013.htm I hope it helps place and date the artifact for you.
Sincerely
Elizabeth

After at first typing it in wrong and wondering why I could not get the link to work (duh), I corrected the url and was taken to a link with a foreign language article about Gilgamesh.  I vaguely remember something about the epic from high school, but have never read it in full (English translated version).  A picture of my ivory court beauty is used in the article, but without credit or source information so I cannot back-track it.  The epic of Gilgamesh date to approximately 1800 BCE, which would make it quite a bit older than the circa 1000 BCE date for the creation of the Nimrud ivories.  So, I'll need to add this to my list of never-to-be-accomplished research project, learning more about the Nimrud ivories.  Somehow, the ivory court beauty just doesn't seem to be of the same genre as the examples shown in The Daily Mail article.

500 Year Old Pawn Discovered

From icelandreview.com  (I was not able to find any photographs of the pawn, or the king found three years ago).

27.06.2011 | 18:16
A 500 Years Old Pawn Found in Iceland

An archeological group working in Gufuskálar in Snæfellsnes has found a piece from a chess set, thought to be more than 500 years old. The set was probably used by sailors when they were ashore. The piece found now was a pawn.

Three years ago a king from the same set was found when digging in another seamen’s dwelling in Gufuskálar.

The work is done by archeologists from the Icelandic Archeological Society and the City University of New York, CUNY. According to mbl.is the work is done for the summer. In an interview Lilja Björk Pálsdóttir, who was in charge of the project mentioned a few interesting objects that were found, including a broken copper pin with a carved head, a pearl made of amber and a bottle cap made of haddock bone.

The most interesting find was the chess piece, possibly made out of whale bone. The group assumes it comes from the same set as a king that was found three years ago in a nearby ruin.

Were Chess Relics Uncovered During a Moscow Construction Project?

This "oh by the way" throw-away segment in the following article from The Moscow News online in English caught my eye:

Moscow’s chess lovers ready to practice
by Lidia Okorokova at 06/09/2010 22:15

Chess on display

Chess also has its own museum in Moscow, established in 1980, but it is currently closed for refitting and renovation.

“The chess museum may be re-opened soon with a new collection of chess that were discovered recently at a construction site in Moscow during an archaeological excavation,” chief Moscow archaeologist Alexander Veksler recently said at a press-conference at Interfax.

The museum’s collection has unique sets of chess pieces from 18th – 20th centuries, including chess boards made from jade and gems from the Urals, so one can only hope that it will be open to the public again soon.

Address: Moscow, Gogolevsky
Bulvar 14, Kropotkinskaya metro.
Phone: (495) 291-4429

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Hmmmm, seems I missed the announcement.  Just what is this "new collection of chess" that were discovered recently at a construction site in Moscow?

I mean, if someone tossed away a 19th century Staunton set in Moscow in 1910 and it was buried under the rubble of a building blown up during the Revolution or one or both world wars, who cares?  That is hardly earth-shattering news and although such a set might merit interest in a local museum - really - it's hardly worth a news report on the Interfax. I was not able to find anything else online on the discovery and I'm not a subscriber to Interfax so, that's it, folks.  Unless someone else out there has further information.

CHESS IS RACIST, CLASSIST AND - OH MY - HOMOPHOBIC!

Chess is identified as an extremely racist game in this week's "The Spoof" because it is, after all, darlings, based upon a black team versus a white team.*

Oh - I forgot to add it is also classist and homophobic. Homophobic? Oh well...

Govt urges people to boycott "Chess" because it's racist, classist and homophobic
Wednesday, 25 August 2010
After the fiasco about banning Medal of Honour on the ground that it encourages players to kill British soldiers (even though there are apparently no British soldiers in the game), the government now wants people to stop playing chess!

The government says that chess is all about racial domination, with players assuming an army based entirely on skin colour. To make matters worse, they use tactics which stereotype and belittle underprivileged members of society, such as sacrificing pawns. But worst of all, the game is homophobic because of its use of the Queen as the most powerful piece. A Home Office Minister said "The Queen is clearly intended to be a gay general".

More - if you dare...

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Well, not quite.

Early Chaturanga pieces, from which, most chess historians tell us, our western chess is directly evolved, often used playing pieces with red and green markings on their "heads" so that players could tell the pieces apart. Highly prized Indian chess sets carved of elephant ivory (before the international ban went into effect that proscribed the trade of ivory items internationally, which has not stopped the trade for a single second - more slight of hand BS from our legislators) often show traces of the original red and green colors. 

Red men versus green men.  Hmmm... Communist Chinese versus Martians, anyone?

Horse + Rider = Votive (So they say...)

This figure is 99 mm tall.  I had no idea what the heck that meant so I asked Wiki and got the following answer:  Units of Measure question: How many inches is 99 mm? 99 mm = 3.89763 in.

Hmmmm...a nice size for a mounted knight.  Notice the remainder of red paint.  The description did not extend to whether the entire piece might have been painted at one time, or just these red markings were put here and there - for a particular purpose?  Not addressed.  Was red chosen for a reason?  Not addressed.  What was the pigment made from?  Not addressed. 

This figure is identified as 6th-5th century horse and rider figurine from Cyprus (Tel Dor).

More information on the piece from the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery:

Date: c. 600 BCE-475 BCE
Description: Acession number 1982A979. 
Little figures like this were left by worshippers at religious sanctuaries as offerings to the gods. Different types of figures were left at the sanctuaries of the different gods and goddesses.  Horsemen figures first became common on Cyprus during the 700s BC. Owning a horse would have been very expensive and it is probable that this kind of figure was left as an offering by nobles who wanted to emphasise how rich and important they were.

*******************************************************************

Hmmm, okay, but how would anyone know that a particular horse or horse/rider offering was actually left by a noble?  I mean, was someone there to watch (and possibly record???) what each person offered?  And if the horseman figure became so popular during the 700s BCE, could anyone have purchased one and offered it?  I mean, this dude on his horse isn't exactly an exquisite work of art.  So - was the purchase of a horse and rider figurine restricted to nobles only?  If not, say Mr. P, the dog-poop scooper-upper, ranked rather low on the totem pole of society back in the day, buys a figurine like this from a tired vendor at the end of a busy temple day at a discount price, sort of under-the-table.  Next day he scrapes the poop off his feet, takes a ritual bath, makes his offering at the temple of "X" god, and then dies of pneumonia a week later because he caught a draft in the bath, only the second time he was ever in a pool of water (the first time was in mother's womb).  Does Mr. P get into Heaven?  And if he does, is it the same Heaven that the nobles go to? 

Hmmm, I guess I don't buy the official supposition about the little horse and rider being a "nobles" thing --

Actually, it makes more sense to me that this was a game piece, offered up ritually at the conclusion of the game or a ritualized and much-shortened form of a game, perhaps to denote a "passage" to Heaven, i.e., the Land of the Gods.  I mean, we really don't know, do we, because perhaps we haven't been asking the right questions...  But we do know, for instance, that the ancient Egyptian game of Senet was a game of passage and that the pieces that managed to make it all the way to the end of the game and literally jumped off the board jumped into - yep - Heaven - became Imperishable Stars.  That concept was woven into just about all of Egypt's religious and symbolic art, from pre-dynastic right down to the 5th century CE, when the last Egyptian temples were forcibly closed by the Byzantine "christians" and the religious mystery schools were born, as the "pagans" went underground, so to speak.

There may be a reason that the shape of a "pawn" game piece hasn't changed very much over 5,000 years or so - from Sumer, to Egypt, to Staunton.

The Mystery of the Venafro Chess Pieces - Part 2

I have been hunting around on the internet for further information about the Venafro chess pieces and the circumstances surrounding their discovery in 1932 in Venafro, Italy. A little bit of background information I learned - a very general overview - about Roman burial practices: Prior to about 550 BCE, burial was the preferred custom. Cremation became the favored practice of the Romans after circa 550 BCE, but with the rise of Christianity in the 3rd-4th centuries CE, burial once again became the preferred custom. In the cremation practiced by the Romans, the body would be burned and also some of the decedent's personal possessions. Wine was poured on the fire to put it out and cool down the ashes, after which a close relative (if not the wife or mother of the decedent) would gather up the decedent's bones and ashes and place them in an urn, which would then be entombed, placed in a memorial niche in a communal or family burial ground, or removed back to the home of a close relative. Burial sites were placed outside the city walls. The wealthy purchased private lots along roads and highways; the less well off were buried in community burial facilities (we call them cemeteries today) and the poorest of the poor were evidently buried in open pits with lots of others, and then burned. There is an ancient necropolis outside modern-day Venafro, but I cannot say if the urn burial of the story was discovered there. The following article by Michael Mark was published at Dr. Louis Cazaux's website on chess history. I briefly met Mr. Mark in Amsterdam in November, 2001 while attending the IGK Symposium on chess history held at the Max Euwe Center. I have excerpted the pertinent information Mr. Mark relates regarding the Venafro chess pieces: Ancient Boardgames in Perspective 20 April, 2007 The Beginnings of Chess Michael Mark 　 The second find is said to have been made in Venafro, the site of a small settlement in the district of Campobasso in southern Italy. It appears that in 1932 builders were sinking a well when, at a depth of about three metres, they shattered an urn, revealing human bones. At that stage the authorities were called in, and various objects were removed.(38) Either the authorities assumed or they were told by the builders that the chessmen came from within the urn, although their recent carbon dating to a much later period, to which I shall return, makes this improbable. The pieces are not objects which would have prompted builders to summon archaeologists had they been found at an earlier stage of the dig and it seems very possible that this was the case. The museum authorities in Naples, to whom the discoveries were handed, had no idea what they were. It was only some years later that they were examined and described in Elia 1939, where they were treated as Roman on the assumption that they came from the urn. Subsequently, Fuhrmann 1941 drew attention to similar pieces in glass in the Cairo Museum. These had previously been dated in Lamm 1930 to around the tenth century ad. According to Fuhrmann 1941, they were made using an art and technique which are pre-Islamic and of which there are no examples dating from later than the first centuries of the Roman empire. The basis for this assertion, however, is unstated and unclear, and according to Allan 1995 the marvered glass used for these chessmen was used in Egypt and Syria from about the twelfth century to the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. Controversy over the Venafro pieces continued over half a century, until the museum authorities in Naples were persuaded to have them carbon-dated. This was carried out in laboratories in Naples and Sydney, using the accelerator mass spectrometry method on a fragment of about 1 gram taken from one of the major pieces, and the results were reported with a history of the pieces in Gli Scacchi di Venafro 1994. The results of the two tests, which correlated closely with each other, were that there was a 68% probability that the pieces were from the period ad 885–1017, with a 95% probability that were from one of the periods ad 781–-1044, ad 1104–1112 and ad 1147–1152. It is not clear from the report why the two later periods totalling thirteen years are included when the intervening periods of ad 1045–1103 and 1113–1146 are omitted. ************************************************************************************** Note 38: O. Elia (1939), ‘Un Gioco di Scacchi di Eta Romana’, Bolletino del Museo dell’ Impero Romano 10: 57–63. Here is the citation for the report on the carbon dating tests: Terrasi F., Campajola L., Petrazzuolo F., Brondi A., Cipriano A., D’Onofrio M., Hua Q., Roca V., Romano M., Romoli M., Tuniz C. and Lawson E. (1994) L’Italia Scacchistica 1064, 4860. I believe that both of these articles are in Italian, and so they would be of no use to me since I do not know that language. Is there any chance that there are English translations available of one or both items??? (Probably not, but I ask anyway). Or reports on the excavation in English???

*************************************************************************************

Mr. Mark thinks it likely that workers on the site of the excavation for the well came across the Venafro chess pieces - at some level prior to where the burial urn was smashed into with the digging equipment - and he assumes one or more of the workers removed the pieces without calling the authorities. This kind of thing happens all the time when relics are come across while digging for sewers, wells, underground trains, etc. I've read lots of reports about items being tossed aside as part of rubble to be buried in a landfill or dumped into the ocean because contractors don't want to be bothered with shutting down their work for an archeological dig (time is money, as the saying goes). Or the pieces were spirited away by workers who (particularly today) were savvy that such items might have some kind of worth to somebody. Or some combination of both. Impossible to know without further information what may have been the case when the pieces were uncovered from the Venafro burial - statements from the workers, for instance (although any statements given may have been colored with the wish of obscuring the true circumstances of how the pieces were found, for reasons of self-preservation). Questions begetting more questions! Why, if one or more of the workers removed the pieces either with the intention of dumping them or hiding them as potentially valuable items, did one or more of those workers then turn the pieces over to the authorities? Were all of the pieces turned over to the authorities??? Is is possible that some savvy workman held back one or more of the pieces and that today, they are part of one or more private chess collections? Is it possible that one or more pieces still exist out there - somewhere - stashed away by one of the workers (possibly buried?) and then never recovered - waiting to be discovered for the next excavation project a thousand years from now?

The Mystery of the Venafro Chess Pieces

A spectacular discovery was made in 1932 - several Arabic style chess pieces in pristine condition, recovered from (I believe) an equally pristine Roman era grave. (Image: The Venafro chess pieces, from Louis Cazaux's website on chess). I expect the discovery caused a great sensation among chess historians because, up to that point, it had been assumed that H.J.R. Murray (A History of Chess), the god of chess history, was right in his assertion that chess was invented in northern India sometime in the 6th century CE. But here were those Venafro pieces, throwing Murray's assertions right out the window! Part of the mystery would not be solved until 1994 when a tiny piece of one of the bone chess pieces was analyzed using the latest carbon-dating techniques. From the Encyclopedia Moderna (online): The Venafro chessmen The Venafro chessmen, discovered in 1932 in the southern Italian necropolis of Venafro, are among the most controversial chess-related archaeological finds of this century. For more than 60 years, archaeologists have formulated a variety of hypotheses to explain how bone chess pieces of Arabic shape were discovered in a tomb of Roman age. Some scholars claimed that the chessmen were indeed of Roman origin. The chess pieces are preserved in the Archaeological museum of Naples, where a bone fragment of 2 grams was collected for AMS analysis. AMS radiocarbon measurements yielded a calibrated age of 885-1017 AD (68 % confidence level) (Terrasi et al., 1994), supporting the view that this game was introduced to Central Italy during the Saracen invasions of the 10th century AD. Great mystery, indeed! How did those Islamic style chess pieces get into a Roman era grave? I haven't read anything about that online. Why not? Too esoteric? I would have though this is a story ripe for lots of articles. I suppose it has now been concluded that the pristine (i.e., undisturbed) Roman era grave was not so pristine after all, as there would be no other way to account for the presence of the chess pieces, which at the earliest were dated to 885 CE, long after the Roman era had passed into herstory. They must have been buried in the grave sometime after they were carved. Or maybe the chess pieces are embued with the ability to time travel? Or a time traveller from the "future" buried the pieces during the time the grave was new? One can go on and on with suppositions about how the Venafro chess pieces got buried in that Roman era grave. But the question remains. Why would someone bury the chess pieces to begin with, whether they were buried in 885 CE or in 1017 CE or somewhere in-between? I can think of two reasons one would bury something like those chess pieces (there is no dispute that they are chess pieces). Several ancient (and not-so-ancient) cultures have buried sacrifices made to deities. Many obviously brand-new objects have been excavated over the years that were buried intact, but sometimes smashed into pieces and then buried. When it hasn't been obvious that the objects were "treasure trove," archaeologists and anthropologists have concluded that these items were sacrifices and/or devotional offers to various gods and goddesses. The other reason to bury something is to hide it from others. I am assuming that a rational person would not go through the trouble of burying something that he or she did not consider valuable or, in some other way, worthy of being preserved as a memorial. For instance, the container holding the ashes of my dog Spencer, who died in 1999, are buried under a memorial birdbath in my backyard. Whenever I look at the birdbath, and I see it every single day, I think of Spencerdog. Could the Venafro chessmen be something buried centuries afterward as a memorial to the person in that grave? This raises so many questions - among which is the most important - that whoever buried those chess pieces knew that they were burying them at so and so's grave. Speaking of which, I have no idea who was buried in that grave. I do not believe I have read that information in a single article about the Venafro chess pieces. Might that information provide a vital clue? I have read in many descriptions of the Venafro chess pieces that they were carved out of bone (some descriptions say they were topped with ivory). I never though about just what this means. Then this morning, I learned in a totally unrelated email from dondelion that the Venafro chess pieces were carved from deer horn. It just so happens that Carlos Lascoutx has been posting a lot of information about deer and horns the last few days - and I did a post in response this morning - which dondelion could not have known about. That Old Goddess Magic at work? Deer imagery goes back many thousands of years in pre-history. For instance, I blogged about an image showing a Shaman either transformed into a "deer-man" or wearing deer antlers, and I posted this article about an unnamed goddess excavated in Iran - she is a pair of red deer horns! So - what about checking on old "deer horn" chess pieces? I found several references to this material being used at Dr. Louis Cazaux's website (I was amazed, actually). This is by no means meant to be an exhaustive study. I found these under the heading of "The First European Chess Pieces" by scrolling down the page and looking at the captions under the thumbnail images: (1) Chariot, deer bone or antler, 10th c., found at Loisy, Musée des Ursulines,Mâcon (2) King (?), deer bone or antler, 10th c., found at Loisy,Musée des Ursulines,Mâcon (3) Rook, deer bone, 978-1070, Pineuilh, Gironde, France (4) Scandinavian Knight, Bishop, Pawn, deer bone, Beginning 11th c., Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum (5) Scandinavian or German Chessmen, deer bone, found at Ilot des Deux-Bornes, around Noyon, OiseBeg 12th c., Musée du Noyonnais, Noyon, France Several other pieces were identified as carved of "bone" but the type of bone was not specified. Perhaps this was not determined at the time the pieces were discovered and/or catalogued or tests to determine what type of bone have never been performed. I mean, what difference could it possibly make, right? Except it might be very important what materials were used to make old chess pieces. Just based on the admittedly unscientific information presented here by me and Carlos Lascoutx about antlers/horns/deer the significance of the ancient iconography is worth looking into further. Was there some ritual significance attached to using deer horn to carve chess pieces? Perhaps that is being too literal - how about a very old tradition of using deer horn to carve certain significant objects being passed on from generation to generation, and the reason why this was done had long since been lost under the gloss of Christianity and/or Islam? Sounds like a good PhD thesis! http://goddesschess.blogspot.com/2009/07/from-discovery-news-altar-to-mysterious.html (antlers/deer/horns discussed in comments) http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=2146412185 http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=68642&sectionid=351020105 (See image of deer horn goddess, above) http://goddesschess.blogspot.com/2009/02/ceraunos-and-cernunnos.html http://goddesschess.blogspot.com/2008/03/further-information-on-peruvian.html See also http://goddesschess.blogspot.com/2009/04/12000-15000-year-old-carving-found-in.html

Auction Watch

From Sotheby's, an auction held October 8, 2008. Arts of the Islamic World Sale: L08222 Location: London Auction Dates: Session 1: Wed, 08 Oct 08 10:00 AM LOT 84 AN IVORY CHESS PIECE, EGYPT OR SYRIA, 10TH-11TH CENTURY8,000—12,000 GBPLot Sold. Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium: 17,500 GBP MEASUREMENTS measurements note4.5cm. height 4cm. diam. DESCRIPTION Of solid cylindrical form with rounded edges, one half of the top with a flat surface in keeping with the shape of the base, the other side split by the central raised boss, curves down each side, two large cruciform motifs incised on both the front and back, similar dot motif clusters on either side placed above the three band indentation wrapping around the object, drilled concentric circles to the base CATALOGUE NOTE This abstract form is an impressive example of a group of ivory chessmen with decorative patterns carved into the surface. Existent in the early Islamic centuries, this form has traditionally been associated with the arrival of the game from India. However it seems likely that both figural and abstract forms were already in use prior to this. This piece is a symbolic representation of both the 'King' and the throne which is demonstrated by the form of the chess piece. (Emphasis added) A related piece was sold in these rooms on 30th April 1998, lot 1. Closely comparable ivory pieces can be found at the British Museum (A. Contadini: 'Islamic Ivory Chess Pieces, Draughtsman and Dice' in Islamic Art in the Ashmolean Museum, ed. James Allan, Oxford, 1995, Part Im pp.111-154). Two more were excavated at Aachen in 1925 and are discussed with other examples by Manfred Eder (Bagdad-Bergkristall-Bernedictiner Zum Ex-orient des Schachspiels, Aachen, 2203 esp.pp.36-36 and 76-77). Further ivory pieces are exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts and a larger version was sold at Christie's, 11 April 2000. A similar 'King' can also be found in the Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin (Ernst Kühnel, Die Islamische Elfenbeinskupturen, Berlin, 1971, no.9, pl.V) Kühnel dates that piece to the eight or ninth century and attributes it to Egypt.

Medieval Russian Chess Piece Excavated

Archaeologists find 600-year-old chess piece in northwest Russia 14:51 18/ 07/ 2008 VELIKY NOVGOROD, July 18 (RIA Novosti) - Archaeologists in northwest Russia have discovered a chess piece dating back to the late 14th century, a spokesman for local archaeologists said on Friday. "The king, around several centimeters tall, is made of solid wood, possibly of juniper," the spokesman said. The excavations are being carried out at the site of the Palace of Facets, in the Novgorod Kremlin in Veliky Novgorod. The palace is believed to be the oldest in Russia. According to the city chronicles, chess as a competitive game emerged in Veliky Novgorod, the foremost historic city in northwest Russia, in the 13th century, but was banned in 1286 by the church. However, besides the king, archeologists in the region have found a total of 82 chess pieces dating back to at least the 14th century, showing that the game remained popular among the local population despite the church ban. In late May, archaeologists in the ancient city uncovered a number of medieval baby bottles. Medieval Slavs made feeding bottles by attaching leather bags to the wider part of a cow's horn. The babies drank milk from holes made in the tip of the horns. The first historical mention of Veliky Novgorod was in 859 AD. City chronicles say that by 862 AD it was already a stop on the trading route between the Baltics and Byzantium. The city will celebrate its 1150th anniversary in 2009.

Want to Buy an Ancient Chess Piece?

I envy collectors who have the funds to buy the things they want. Sigh. There are beautiful chess sets available at auction. I look through the catalogs and see things I’d love to buy for $1,000 to $2,000. If only! Then, of course, there are the rare pieces that fetch $60,000 USD. You can find these at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. For great lot sales, though, check out Bloomsbury.

The question is why I feel drawn to these antique pieces? Part of it is because of my great love for history, especially ancient history. I’ve been fascinated by ancient cultures since I first learned to read. Part of it is the "story" I imagine behind each and every piece I see. Well, that’s always been the tension – tell stories and starve, or work for a living. I should have gone for a Ph.D in history and become a professor. Oh well.

One of my favorite places to visit from time to time is BC Galleries in Australia. I haven’t purchased anything from them but – maybe some day.

These are two lovely affordable pieces circa 1000 year old pieces, described as:
Two early Islamic bone game pieces, most probably chess pieces, each with concentric circle designs.
Origin: Circa 10th-12th century CE Afghanistan.
Dimensions: Height of each 3.7 cm
Price: AUD $575 USD $479

Maybe someday.