September 21, 2004
history of chess pieces
Chess pieces move the way they do for a reason:
A drunk Scottish guy in a pub told me this story. Fisk away.
Chess pieces are wee representations of ancient warfare.
1. Pawns. Foot soldiers. They were ordered to advance, fight to the death, and never retreat. Manoeuvring a phalanx of them in any direction other than forwards was pretty much impossible until the advent of the highly trained, highly drilled professional soldier, which didn't appear until much later with the Romans.
2. Knights. In ancient times, Calvary never advanced head on, but flanked i.e. they went around the back and attacked at the side.
3. Rooks. The original chess rooks were not castles, but war elephants. Elephants are fairly unstoppable once they get going, but not very manoeuvrable. Hence they can go in straight lines- forward, backward, left, right- but little else. In ancient times war elephants carried little “castles” on their backs, from which archers would fire down (think Lord of the Rings). Europe has no elephants, but does have castles. So the latter caught on.
4. Bishops. Chess predates Christianity in Europe. The original bishop pieces were actually sailing ships. Sailing ships never go straight, but tack to the left or right i.e. diagonal. The sail of the ship resembles the bishop’s crown. The bishops's crown was stylistically adopted in Europe during the Dark Ages, as Chistianity spread and naval warfare went into decline after the fall of the Roman Empire.
5. The Queen. The Queen’s entourage was always looked after by a small, elite, highly trained bodyguard. The imperative to protect the women and children was very strong. If trouble was afoot it needed to get the hell out of Dodge very quickly. Ergo the bodyguard was very mobile and very deadly. It needed to be.
6. The King, though powerful and free to choose any direction he wanted, was heavily laden with the apparatus of state. The King could not just drop everything and flee; he had the court, the treasury and the ministers weighing him down. So his movements were fairly limited.
Posted by hugh macleod at September 21, 2004 1:13 PM | TrackBackActually, the queen didn't even exist in Indian or Arab chess. She was a southern European addition around 1000 AD, and was a very weak piece until 1500 AD or so. Cf. Birth of the Chess Queen : A History, by Marilyn Yalom.
Posted by: Katherine at September 21, 2004 2:31 PMWell there ya go! ;-)
Posted by: hugh macleod at September 21, 2004 3:28 PMSo how does this translate to the modern world? i.e. the corporate world??
Posted by: J.P. at September 21, 2004 3:52 PMWhy must everything translate to the corporate world? Let things be, cherish the past and move on. After all, as Froyd said 'sometimes a hanger is just a hanger'
Posted by: Basileios at September 21, 2004 5:01 PMThis is fun - except for the bit about naval warfare going into decline after the fall of the Roman Empire. Not exactly. Naval Warfare didn't even reach its zenith until the 20th century. So how about after World War II, just a few years later?
Posted by: Jefferson at September 21, 2004 6:51 PMI really like this history. I am passing along to my Dad. Every Thanksgiving we play and 2001 I beat him. Oh how I relish that day. :)
Posted by: Charlotte at September 21, 2004 7:54 PMUmmm.... Jefferson, the decline I'm talking about started in about 500 A.D. and lasted for about 1000 years.
Western European naval warfare had very little innovation in that time frame. Refinement of Hellenic methods (i.e galley slaves), and litle else. Spain, Europe's biggest navy in 1587, was still using galleys.
That all changed with the advent of gunpowder, of course....
Posted by: hugh macleod at September 22, 2004 10:41 AMI miss Kays. Or the Antiq.
Sitting inside on a long lazy winter afternoon with the sun streaming through a pint of fizzy industrial lager, striving to get the perception level down until the shite that the guy next to you was telling you seemed profound. In those days I was young, and that was about two pints.
Those voices! All smokers with tones that an ad man would dream of, all ethnic sincerity, and damn plausible. Everything was fine, in that little world, then you stepped out of the door, and the magic vanished.
There you were, on the street in the cold, and it suddenly occurred to you that it wasn't possible to solve the world's ills from the stool in the pub. But by God that didn't stop them making some epic attempts.
Now, you have to be more or less unconscious not to notice the fact that these guys are lovable idiots.
Not to say that a stopped clock can't tell the right time twice a day, because that chess story is interesting, if not especially plausible, at least it shows an interest in why it's such a good game.
That's another sign of the 21st century. I lost interest in chess about the time that my mobile phone starting winning against me...
Posted by: Hamish at September 22, 2004 5:06 PMYeah, I remember being 17 or 18 in Edinburgh and thinking that's what grownups did for a living... collect fun stories and tell them to random teenagers in pubs. Heh.
Posted by: hugh macleod at September 22, 2004 5:28 PMMarilyn Yalom with their latest book “Birth of the Chess Queen” has a good feeling for history.
Indeed I proved after 20 years study with three books (1994, 1997 and february, 2004) that Isabella I of Castile is the symbol of the new powerful chess queen.
See www.damasweb.com and http://www.damasweb.com/ingles/
Govert Westerveld
alright katherine i have a question...if the queen wasn't in the original game what was there in her place how did they keep the board even??? did they have to kings???
Posted by: leslie at October 24, 2004 6:09 PMalright katherine i have a question...if the queen wasn't in the original game what was there in her place how did they keep the board even??? did they have two kings???
Posted by: leslie at October 24, 2004 6:09 PMYou may be interested to know that "pawn" and "foot soldier" are liguistically related. From www.etymonline.com:
"lowly chess piece," 1369, from Anglo-Fr. poun, O.Fr. peon, earlier pehon, from M.L. pedonem "foot soldier," from L.L. pedonem (nom. pedo) "one going on foot," from L. pes (gen. pedis) "foot" (see foot). The chess sense was in O.Fr. by 13c. Fig. use, of persons, is from 1589.
Or not.
Posted by: Philboid Studge at November 17, 2004 7:24 PM