Last week, a remarkable archaeological discovery was made in Britain, and it was found in a drawer in Scotland. Around 1964, an antique dealer found a little chess piece on sale for 5 pounds, or about $6. He thought it was cute and so he bought it and put it away and then forgot about it. His family just found it 55 years later. It is a little chess piece, a knight. It is about 3½ inches high and it is made of walrus bone. If it is sold, it is expected to be worth about $1.3 million.
The little fellow is one of the incredible Lewis chessmen. Sometime in the 12th century, at least four chess sets were made, perhaps in Trondheim in Norway, in the days when the Norwegian kings ruled over the outer Scottish islands. Their design resembles states of saints in medieval cathedrals in Norway, and similar chess pieces have been found there in the ruins of old noble castles and homes. English and Icelandic scholars also believe that the sets were produced by their cultures, but the bulk of scholarship gives credit to Norway.
A total of 93 pieces, which may have formed four different chess sets, were originally discovered on the Island of Lewis in the Hebrides Islands, which are now part of Scotland, in April 1831. The appear to have been lost by a wrecked ship or perhaps buried by traders for safekeeping. After their discovery, they were sold to the British Museum where most of them now reside, with some being in the Scottish National Museum. The robes of the kings, the vestments of the bishops, and the weapons of the knights are quite accurate for the 12th century, and they show the different strata of medieval social class.
Chess has been called the “game of kings” and pious Christian legend attributed its invention to King Solomon himself. Hindu legend says that it came from a wise man who invented the game to instruct a tyrannical king named Shimram what his subjects were actually like, hence the variety of characters on the board. It is actually the combined product of at least four different religious cultures. Its origin seems to have been in a war game of Northern India called Chaturanga. The original pieces were designated as the four kinds of military types used in the day, the horseman, infantry, elephant and chariot. The would be the ancestors of our modern pieces, the knight, pawn, bishop and rook.
From Hindu India, the game spread to the Zoroastrian lands of Persia, where it became known as “Shah,” or “king.” The phrase “shah mat” which means the “king is finished” lives on in our modern English term, “checkmate” said when one wins the game. Unfortunately for the Zoroastrians, but fortunately for chess, Persia was soon conquered by the Muslim Arabs who loved the game, developed its rules, and called it “shatranj.” In Islamic society it was impossible to think of the ruler being without his top adviser at his side, and so a piece which resembled a court official which always sat next to the shah, or king, became the Vizir.
Although it is commonly said that chess came to Europe as a result of the crusades, in fact it came through several routes, mostly through trade with Spain, Russia and the Balkans. Here again the game had to be modified. Medieval kings had no Vizir, but they did have queens who sat next to the king, and so the Vizir got a transgender change into a Queen. The Arabic word for an “elephant” was “Al-Fil” which got turned into “bishop.” Perhaps this was because elephants were mighty warriors, and medieval bishops were powerful men who controlled lands and troops. Every military had the poor infantryman, in Arabic, the “baidaq” or in English the “pawn.” By the 15th century in Spain, the rules for the game had become fairly standardized, in part thanks to the development of the printing press. The rules we now use for chess were completed in the early 1880s.
The great popularity of the game would have made nicely carved ivory pieces a treasure for any king or baron, and so the Lewis chessmen were certainly destined for sale, perhaps in Ireland. Today the Island of Lewis is known for its archaeology of ancient civilizations, some craft industry and crofter farming. While traveling in Scotland as a student, I ran into an anthropology student who lived on Lewis for several months studying the culture. When I asked her what it was like there, given its remote location, she replied, “All they do is drink.” Perhaps they should have learned to play chess when they had the chance.
