More Chess Lessons from Ancient History

See prior posts:

August 8, 2007: Chess Lessons from Ancient History

August 9, 2007: More Chess Lessons from Ancient History

September 4, 2007: The Priestesses of Mary

It has been said that chess is a game of archetypes. One of those archetypes is the concept of rulership, as embodied in the throne. The throne is a woman. As far back as we have datable archaeological artifacts, the throne is a woman (more on this later). This isn't a feminist manifesto of uterine power - it's just the plain ol' simple truth. Jan, August 9, 2007

I’m saving a lot of good stuff for an eventual big, long and scholarly (cough, cough) article for Goddesschess, but I realized I owed a post here based on the "more on this later" comment I made in my August 9, 2007 post referenced above.

There is a big gap, time-wise, between the ancient Egyptian Goddess Isis, the Ashdoda, and Mary, Queen of Heaven. In between are many women/throne combination artifacts that have been excavated over the years, all across the Middle East, the Aegean, and Central Asia. By way of example, several thousand years before Isis, there was the "Leopard Queen" discovered at Katul Hoyuk, who is perhaps the oldest representation of a woman upon a throne; the Vinca culture, represented by recent excavations at Plocnik, dates to about 5000 BCE (photo: a headless goddess sits on a chair, with hands resting on rounded belly, perhaps pregnant, Vinca culture, Plocknik); Isis dates to about 3400-3200 BCE. There is a chronological and cultural progression of worship of the Queen of Heaven during all that time, right down to the 3rd century CE, when the Collyridians worshipped the Virgin Mary as the Queen of Heaven.

Epiphanius states that the "priestesses of Mary" worshipped her as a goddess in her own right, the Queen of Heaven, with rituals far older than Christianity, and "adorn a chair or square throne, spread a cloth over it, and at a certain solemn time, place bread on it and offer it in the name of Mary." The worshippers also partook of the sacred cakes.

In the Bible, this harkens back to reports made by the prophets in the Old Testament regarding worship of a much more ancient Queen of Heaven than the Virgin Mary, who was worshipped in Palestine and Phoenicia thousands of years before Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, was conceived. The worshippers of Ashtoreth, Asherah and Ishtar all celebrated their revered Goddesses by baking specially marked "cakes" (various types of flat and risen breads) and consuming them at special feast times. The custom passed all the way down to modern times, in the form of "Hot Cross Buns" which are served on Easter Sunday, the holiday of the Germanic Mother Goddess Eostre.

Despite the Church Fathers’ best efforts to suppress the "heresy" of worship of the Mother Goddess, the Queen of Heaven, they failed. Finally, they capitulated (perhaps in the nature of "if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em…) The Council of Ephesus in 431 CE formally sanctioned devotion to the Virgin Mary as Theotokos, Mother of God, (literally, God bearer), allowing the creation of icons bearing the images of the Virgin and Child. Devotion to Mary was, however, already widespread by this point. Early representations showed Mary as the "Throne of Heaven" with Mary and the Child Jesus both crowned as royalty. These are, though, just a reiteration of the 3000 years earlier representations of Isis with Horus on her lap.

Like Isis with the infant Horus was in her day, Mary as the Queen of Heaven (both crowned and uncrowned) with the infant Jesus on her lap was a particularly popular theme among Medieval and Renaissance artists.

I yet need to provide a link between "Mary, Queen of Heaven" and the game of chess – beyond the rather esoteric and yet ancient concept of " woman as throne" that I previously mentioned. Stay tuned…

More Chess Lessons From Ancient History

Hola darlings! I'm exhausted. It was one of those "days from Hell" at the office and the weather is right up there supporting Hell Days. The forecast has changed - what promised to be a weekend of temperatures in the low 80's with lower dew point is now scheduled to be in the 90's with higher yet dew points. I tell you, I'm already scraping mold off my legs - and that's just after walking the half mile to the bus stop in the morning! I can see it now - Milwaukee is going to turn into Mold City and there will be sightings of "green and blue" monsters stalking the streets, should that dew point get much higher. I mean - how high can it go? Does it go on to infinity, like an irrational number?

This will be a short, sweet post. I want to continue the line about the "throne" iconography that is everywhere implied in the ancient game of chess but nowhere represented until the Islamists decided that playing with "figural" chess pieces broke a tabu against depicting living beings - or something like that. I still have not read a clear and convincing discussion of where this tabu came from and why anyone would think it could possibly apply to board game pieces. Ah well - religion never has been a very rational undertaking, has it...

When the Islamists designed their "abstract" chess pieces, the "king" and "vizier" took the form of a cylinder (the king's somewhat taller) with a cut out for what looked like a seat. In fact, many commentators have described the pieces as "thrones" - representative certainly of the king and to a lesser extent the vizier who, as the trusted royal advisor who sometimes served as "regent" when the king was absent, was the "power behind the throne." We've all seen those pieces, and variations on the theme. You can see two of those variations on the theme here (the "Nishapur" chess pieces, and also read the original 1943 article that I transcribed a few months back). Those designs, though, came late to the party, relatively speaking, first being seen in chess pieces in the mid-8th century CE.

Now, take a look at the lovely lady at the beginning of this post. She is a female figure, with an elongated neck and conical breasts, in the form of a chair. She was excavated at Ashdod in Israel, and dates to the 12th century BCE. She measures nearly seven inches tall. She was found near a site of cultic activity which, according to the November/December 2005 issue of Biblical Archaeology, may mean that it was used for votive offerings (the site, that is, not the object). Fragments of similar figurines were also found during escavations at Ekron (Israel). This "Ashdoda" figure shows Mycenaen influence, "harkening back to the Philistine homeland in the Aegean."

Now darlings, everyone knows that you don't make a chair simply to stare at it and go "oh how pretty." Chairs are made to be sat upon - and in this example of an Ashdoda (which is a replica offered for sale online by the Israel Museum, Jerusalem) we see the symbolism of the Isis "throne" now physically embodied as a female figure, incorporated into a votive. I'm not suggesting cross-cultural transfer here, although certainly that may have occurred to some extent or other; it is the overarching archetype that keeps cropping up in iconography from all around the Middle East, the Mediterranean and into Asia, crossing all cultural and religious lines and being carried on for thousands of years, that is of true importance here.

It has been said that chess is a game of archetypes. One of those archetypes is the concept of rulership, as embodied in the throne. The throne is a woman. As far back as we have datable archaeological artifacts, the throne is a woman (more on this later). This isn't a feminist manifesto of uterine power - it's just the plain ol' simple truth.