The Origins of Chess

Babylonian Chess?
By C. J. Gadd

(Ed. note: Unfortunately, reproduction of Sumerian and other foreign language character sets are problematic in html. Question marks ( ? ) and ( _ ) spaces appear where typography fails. Otherwise, this text provides most of the necessary detail required to gain an understanding of Gadd's investigation.)

"We have not, as yet, found them in Nineveh or Babylon,
though we are convinced they were played there."

( E. Falkener, "Games Ancient and Oriental", Introduction, p. 2.)

For one who had the privilege of displaying to the first readers of Iraq some specimens of a game long favoured in many parts of the ancient East, it may not be inappropriate to celebrate this journal's recommencement with a less sub- stantial allusion to a like subject. This is a reference in a Babylonian augural text to something which, as I shall try to make plausible, may perhaps be a game with some likeness to Chess. A reinforcement of this will then be sought from the observation of a single detail in the archaeology of Chess, which seems to point back to a Babylonian prototype of unique character.

In A. T. Clay's Babylonian Records in the Library of J. Pierpont Morgan, part IV, is published as No. 13 a tablet from Erech of the Seleucid period, inscribed with a chapter of 'omens' derived from inspection of the entrails of a sacrificed victim. The tablet in question is the seventh of the augural work called as a whole barutu, i.e. 'seership', and at the same time is the third tablet of the section called summa tiranu, i.e. "if the guts (etc.)". Though this copy was written in the year 213 B.C. that is, of course, no reason for supposing that its contents were composed at that time. A fragment of the same compilation (1) was in the Assyrian royal library at Nineveh, and this takes it back to the seventh century B.C. at least. No doubt most of its contents are older still.

Lines 73 and 74 of this may be read as follows: summa tiranu kina su-us-kal-li amut a-dan-su isbat sa sa-tam ride sa. _na libbi ummani_- su ana sid-ru nari imtaqut, "If the guts are like a net (it is) the omen of 'he took his appointed time', of the inspector of police who, in the midst of his company, fell on, to the line of the river".

This tablet contains several allusions to historical personages, Etana, Naram-Sin, and a usurper who ruled all the land. As in many other examples the omens in question are called the amutu of these characters. The meaning is that this mark was found in the entrails when a certain historic incident occurred to a famous person. If found, again it would of course suggest a like consequence, but the texts confine themselves to mentioning the occurrence.

The translation proposed above must first be substantiated, especially in the phrase written ambiguously A.KAL.SU.LU. Before proceeding with reasons in favour of transcribing this a'dan-su isbat some alternatives must be considered: a-kal-su 'his food', very unlikely, and what is to be done with LU? Nothing can be got out of connecting it with the following sa. Another possibility would be A.KAL, milu, 'flood', which might seem to be supported by naru, later in the passage, but LU would still be a difficulty. The only translation of these lines which I have seen since the first editor,(2) who was evidently at loss, has been put forward by R. Labat:(3) 'oracle du general Akalsulu qui au milieu de ses troupes, en (ctd.)

(1) K. 3805, see A. Boissier. Choix de textes relatifs a la divination assyrio-babylonienne, I, p. 91.

(2) CLAY, op. cit., p. 37

(3) Le charactere religieux de royaute assryo-babylonienne p. 325, n5.

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- interrogeant Ie fleuve. se noya.' This translation is open to criticism at almost every point. That no such person as 'Akalsulu' is otherwise known does not indeed prove that he did not exist in fact or legend. But 'le general A.' is not a possible translation of A, !a "Sa-tam etc. The phrase 'en interrogeant Ie fleuve' evidently depends upon a reading ana sit-ul nari, but neither the grammar nor the sense of this is admissible. The final word of the omen RU.RU (=imtaqut) ought not without evidence to be rendered 'se noya'. That rivers were watched for omens is well known, but this is not an example. Finally, all of these explanations would leave the resemblance to a net. which is the ominous feature observed, without any relevance. The curious wording of this omen indicates a known set of circumstances; there was a man who 'took his appointed time'. The adannu is a period within which an action may take place concerning which the omens are being consulted. Thus a king engaged in a warlike enterprise might inquire of the haruspices when he was likely to succeed. He might set the period himself, or they, out of their pretended knowledge of the future, might give him a time; (1) this is the adannu, the time oi opportunity. When Cyrus inquired, of Silanus the seer (2) how soon the king would give battle, he was told, not within ten days. Since Cyrus felt confident that if the king postponed it longer he would not fight at all, ten days was probably the period (adannu) set by himself.

The phrase 'he took his appointed time' or 'his opportunity' was therefore associated with some character known in history or popular lore. This person was sa-tam-ride. The satam was an official of moderately high position in the Old Babylonian period, subordinate to provincial or town governors, occasionally sitting with a bench of judges, but principally concerned, it seems, with land administration. The ride were the rank-and-file agents under the orders of higher officers, (3) and in this case may be regarded as the followers of the satam, identical in fact with the ummanu, 'host' or 'company', in the midst of which he was when the incident occurred. The translation suggested above 'inspector of police' does not pretend to be more than general. The satam is to be regarded simply as an officer accompanied by a squad of gendarmes.

What happened is described with some intentional obscurity as 'he fell on to the line of the river'. The obscurity lies first in the allusion; but it must be remembered that a native reader may have found no difficulty in this, if indeed, as I shall suggest, a familiar game was in view. The writing ana sid-UL, however, is a scribal trick, which uses an uncommon phonetic value of UL to write ru. The word thus obtained is sidru, 'line', generally used in the Assyrian inscriptions to mean the line of battle, but in one case at least it refers to a 'lower line' of sculptures, what we should call a lower register. (4) It is true that si-dir or sid-ri would be more correct grammatically, but the scribe was presumably not displeased to add this small irregularity to his disguise.

(1) 'The first implied by the fonnulae used in the Auynaa "questions to the Sun-god" («ee KLAUBER, Politisch- religiose Texte, introd., p.xiii) some specimens of the sewciond are given in Ebeling K.A.R., no 452. Sometimes the opems indicate that the adannu is not long enough e.g. C.T, xx.47, II, 32f.

(2)XENOPHON. Anab. i. 7 $ 18. The number is prominent in another Assyrian tablet comcerned with timing an event by hepatoscopy, see O.L.Z. 1917. 257 ff. It may be supposed that Silamu wu acquainted with these speculations.

(3) See the article of 0. Kruckmann in the Reallixihon der Assyriologie, I 449 f.

(4) The ordinary references may be found in the dictionaries. That concerning the 'lower line' of sculptures is in M. STRECK, Assurbanipal, II. 324 f. with another example (I. 12) in the usual sense. The signs read as sid-ru have, of course, other possibile values, but, as in the case of a-KAL above, none which apply here. However, a mere substitution of consonants written with the same sign would produce (it-ru? - ed. note: document is unclear), 'a writing - a line drawn upon a surface'. This is an entirely different word but by an odd coincidence, it expresses the suggested meaning equally well. We are told that in Chinese Chess, the pieces stand upon the crossings of the lines, not the squares.

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The officer and his troop falling into a river may of course be a popular story involving a possibly ludicrous incident. There are certainly such reminiscences in the omens; another one suggesting comedy is in Ebeling. K.A.R., no. 428 obv 49, ' "if the "palace-guard" of the liver on the right is missing at the bottom the kingÕs barber will seize his lordÕs diadem and run away'. There may be more here than the mere episode which the words suggest, (1) but let it be regarded only as referring to a familiar story. By contrast another omen recalls a tragedy Boissier, Documents Assyriennes, p. 19,11.16 ff. 'if the NA (a part of the liver) is like the scorplonÕs sting, a manÕs wife, in disputing her (?) honour, (2) made fire to fall upon the manÕs house'. Nothing more is known to us of this story, which may have been as famous as that of Tarquin and Lucrece, nor is it easy to understand how it was connected with an omen.

Of a like character with these is the falling of the satam and his men into the river. But there are several hints to make us doubt whether this is a mere story. First, they did not simply fall into the river, but 'on the line' (or, row) of the river. Secondly, it happened when one 'took his appointed time' (or opportunity). Thirdly, the physical appearance of the guts when they presaged this was, that they were 'like a net'. The modern Chinese have a variety of chess played upon a board, or rather, a printed paper, having sixty-four squares which are separated into two parts in the middle by a blank space, the width of one square, called the "River". Four squares in the middle of each side of the board in the first and second rows nearest the edge are crossed with two diagonal intersecting lines, marking an enclosure, which is called the "Palace". The work (3) from which this description is taken proceeds to name the pieces, their positions and their moves. Most, but not all of them, can cross the River, for which there are certain rules. Among the pieces are, of course, (ctd.)

(1) Observe the theft comitted in the absence of the 'palace guard'. There is close parallelism in this with the various persons, including women, who 'seize and run away with' or 'cause to go out' the AD.HAL of their masters. Some refences to this are given in JASTROW, Religion, Bab. and Assyr., II 358, n. 3, and 379, n. 16 and there are others, with intersting variants, yet the allusion remains obscure. An amusing modern parallel may be found in EvelynÕs Diary for May 10th., 1671, when he dined in company with one Blood, 'that impudent bold fellow who had not long before attempted to streal the Imperial crown'.

(2) ina du-bu-ub sub-se-a-lu is of interest apart from the use of the rare word. The phrases seem to be the exact opposite of ( _udbubu a simmi_ti, literally, 'to make a woman talk', which has the implication 'to seduce a woman'. This has been discussed by MEISSNER, Beitrige zum assyr, Worterbuch, 1.32, who quotes a late commentary (CLAY B.R.M., iv, no.20, 1, 60) explaining the phrase by simmi_ta sunnuqua, literally, 'to bring a woman up (close to a thing)' - this hardly enlightens the matter. But Meissner has unaccountably omitted any notice of the following lines, which thus elaborate the explanation, 61, simmi_tu la e-tul(t)-la TU-ma 62. mimma ma-la ta_al-lu-su 63. i-qab-ba-ha 'a woman who....., whatsoever thou asketh her she will tell theee'. This in fact subverts his explanation, for whatever the words imply, they mean what they say, 'to make talk', for in certain circumstances, she will tell you what you ask, reply to questions. It appears therefore that dababu has a particular connection with the sexual affairs of women, for (a) it can be used I the opposite sense of defending and abandoning their honour, and (b) in the latter case it also conveys its literal sense of 'talking'. (A discussion of this passage of the commentary by Ungnad, in A.f.O. xiv, p264, proposes arbitrary changes of reading but remains inconclusive).

(3) Stuart Culin, Chess and Playing Cards (Washington, Goverenment Printing Office, 1898) ; the quotation is from 863. This book, having first directed my attention to the Chinese game in question, led to H.J.R. Murray;s comprehensive History of Chess (1913) which addresses a multitude of medieval texts both Eastern and Western, as well as the material antiquities.

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the Footsoldiers which correspond with Pawns. There is a General (the principal piece) accompanied by two Counsellors, none of which can move outside the Palace. The remaining pieces represent military contingents, the Elephants, Horses, Chariots, and Cannons. An illustration of this Chinese game is reproduced here (1) (sec PI. VII, Fig. I).

The feature of most interest to the present inquiry is the River. In the Chinese game, 'the "Footsoldiers"... can cross the "River", the "River" itself being one move'. In the Babylonian omen the 'company' of gendarmes goes with an officer onto 'the line of the river'. As to the soldiers themselves there is nothing to say, for they are essential to all games of this kind. Of the River not much is known. It is said to have various names with the Chinese 'boundary river, yellow river, celestial river' (i.e. the Milky Way for Chess or a similar game was associated by the Chinese with astrological speculations), (2) but these are not informative. Is there any indication of the source of this River? The only mention it receives in any of the non-Chinese literature collected by Murray is in a subsidiary legend (3) concerning the origin of the game in Firdawsi's Shahnama, '(they made) a square board to represent the ditch, the field of battle, and the armies drawn up opposite one another'. This relates to Persia or north-west India before the tenth century A.D. All that can be said is that it is upon the right road though still far enough in place and time from Babylonia even in the Scleucid age. The River is quite unknown, it seems, to the Chess and Chess-literature of India, which is believed to be the country of origin. Its only trace there might be found in the Boat, used in certain regions as the name of the Rook. But if so it is strange that in China, where there is a River upon the board, none of the pieces is called a Boat.(4)

The 'Palace' of the Chinese chessboard seems not to be a native appellation of the enclosed squares. According to Murray (pp. 126,133) they are called, literally, 'nine castle', and may have originated from a board used for a different game. Otherwise, it would have been opportune to compare the appearance of a 'palace' and even a 'palace-guard' as parts of the liver in the Babylonian hepatoscopy.

If the Satam was indeed a character in a game he must presumably be the almost invariable Counsellor who appears under a variety of names (5) as the attendant of the principal piece in the oriental forms of Chess. But it is impossible to suggest more than a general similarity, for there is little evidence (6) that a Satam ever stood to his king in the relation of a wazir to a Persian or Arabian ruler. Besides, it must be remembered that the Counsellors in the Chinese game are debarred from the possibility of getting into the River, for they cannot quit the 'nine castle'. The sentence in the omen 'he took his appointed time' (if correctly thus translated) was manifestly suggestive to a contemporary reader, since all that follows is an amplification of it. That suggestion is lost upon us. In reference to the (ctd)

(1) After Z.D.M.G. xxrv. 172.

(2) H. J. R. MURRAY, History of Chess. 121 ff. He notes that the Chinese name may actually mean 'the astronomical game'.

(3) Ibid. a 14, cf. 120, n. 8.

(4) There is nevertheless an allusion to the need for a boat to cross the River in Chinese encyclopedia quoted by Murray, p.123. His suggested explanation (p.71) of a the name Boat from a misunderstanding of rukh is admittely a conjecture.

(5) The word satam has no connexion with the modern or historical names of any of the chessmen. But it might be observed that one of them, the Elephant (now the Bishop), is named by a word al-fil which first appears in Assyrian, as piru. (6) An exception is the Hittite or Hurrian atory of Kumarpi. in which the divine minister of a superior god is called his 'satam': see H. G. Guterbock in Orientalia, 1943, p. 348 f.

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idea at present under discussion all that can be noted is the general suitability of such a phrase to a move in a game.

But there is one other expression in the omen which would be remarkably apposite. The condition observed in the entrails was that 'the guts arc like a net'. The word is Su!kallu, an Akkadian adaptation of the Sumerian Sus-gal (or SuS-kal), 'the great overwhelmer', and what is meant by it is shown in the famous sculpture upon the 'Stele of the Vultures' where a god has caught in a wide meshed net the hostile warriors of the city of Umma and clubs them, thus realizing the statements and curses of the local rulers of Lagash, who relate that the nets of various gods have descended upon their enemies and pray that the like may happen to them in any future uprising. It needs no more than bare observation that the net could at once suggest the squares of a surface upon which any chess-like game would be played.

Whatever force there may be in these possibilities (and nobody would call them more) it must be asked what, in any case, is the likelihood of such a connexion between a board-game and an elaborate kind of divination, with the minutest rules of its own ? The answer can be only in the most general terms, whereas it may be .taken for granted, given the known complexion of the Babylonian mind, that if the connexion existed it would have been ingeniously embodied. Knowing nothing of this we can say only that it is generally held there is a distinct connexion between divination and games among primitive peoples, though the evidence relates to divination by much simpler means than the Babylonian haruspicy. A magical significance, at least, is amply attested by the symbols and figures which arc so freely scattered upon, for example, the gaming-board from Ur3 and the small stone game-tables made for Esarhaddon IV. It is, however, a singular fact and one that may be thought fatal to the suggestion here being advanced, that none of the gaming-boards hitherto found at a number of ancient sites in western Asia have the simple form of a square subdivided by lines at right angles, such as is employed by all chess-like games everywhere.

Lacking the board, we must content ourselves with an interesting detail of archaeological evidence from one of the men. In Murray's admirable History of Chess is to be found some curious information upon the early forms of the Rook (see pp. 224, 705, 767). The constant feature which marks these is a top edge indented in the middle, with rising curves on either side, (6) which tend to be elaborated. Also (p. 160) the Persian name rukh originally meant 'chariot'. It is. consequently, a very singular coincidence at least that the front and most prominent part of the chariot in Sumerian times is very much of this shape. Describing a scene upon the 'Stele of the Vultures' in the Louvre, Dr. G. Contenau wrote: "Le patesi (i.e. local ruler) est en char; on apercoit encore les parois de la caisse et son (ctd.)

(1) See Pl. VII, Fig. a, after DE SARZEC, Decouvertes en Chaldee, pl 4 bis.

(2) E. B. TYLOR, Pnmitiw Culture, i. 70 ff., and see also the theory propounded by S. CULIN, op. cit. 858.

(3) C. L. WOOLEY, Ur Excavations. The Royal Cemetary pl. 95.

(4) Iraq, l, pi. Vll. In connexion with these and the Ur board (and also the ivory box from Enkomi, in A. S. MURRAY, Excavations in Cyprus, 12, fig. 19) which all exhibit five, or multiples of five, rosettes, it is interesting to recall the statement in a Spanish History of the Indies (reproduced by Tylor in Intermat Archiv fur Ethnographie, Suppl to Bd. ix (1896) , 9) that in a Mexican game the players invoked a god whose name was Five Roses.

(5) See Mrs. D. Van Buren in Iraq, IV. II ff.

(6) An ivory Rook (French, of about the 12th century AD.) in the Louvre is illustrated here, PI. VIII, Fig. 5, after A. Goldschmidt, Die Elfenbeinskulpturen aus der romanischen Zeit, iv. Pl. I. XIII, no. 180 b. A Latin poem of the same century, quoted by Murray, 499, calls the piece bifrons rochus.

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tablier; celui-ci se presente de face comme une haute planche echancree en son milieu pour permettre Ie passage des renes, bien visible sur Ie bas-relief. Cette disposition est attestee par les petits chars votifs en terre cuite. . . . Ils ont toujours, par rapport a la caisse, cette forme haute qui en fait un organe de protection, l'echancrure pour lea guides, etc." (1)

Two typical illustrations are given here, one of the chariots upon the "standard" found at Ur (PI. VIII, Fig. 3), (2) and one from a terra-cotta model (PI. VIII, Fig. 4).(3) The accurate description of Dr. Contenau gives room for two remarks. One of the medieval ivory Rooks, now in the Musee Cluny (the photograph in Goldschmidt, op. cit. p. 6, fig. 13 is not clear enough to reproduce), shows two thin parallel ridges falling transversely over the cleft at the top. Do not these actually represent the reins? Secondly, there is 'la forme haute' (of the Sumerian chariot-front) 'qui en fait un organe de protection'. It is well known that the double curve on the top of the Rooks later developed into one or even two towers, which caused the piece to change into the Castle, now its prevailing name. It is very striking that the notion of defence should be so clearly expressed in the two kinds of objects which it is here proposed to connect. If both, or either, of the preceding observations are just they would suggest that not only the pattern of the Sumerian chariot-front but the ideas which motivated its shape were preserved in an almost incredibly distant imitation. For it is necessary to add here, what fairness demands, that all of the Sumerian examples are earlier than 2000 B.C. in date, that the form of the chariot in western Asia had altered completely by about 1500 B.C., and that, on the other side, all the medieval chessmen such as the one illustrated are later than A.D. 1000. The explanation of the Rook's shape given by Goldschmidt (op. cit. 5) is that 'nur sehr summarisch die beiden Spitzen an den Pferdekopf und die Wagenlenker des ganz im Profil gesehenen Gespannes erinnern, wahrend die Kerbe der Zinne auf dcm Pferderucken liegt', a suggestion which I cannot think more probable than my own.(4)

If this derivation of the shape of one particular chessman were admitted, it would remain to ask how significant that might be respecting the origin of the game in which it is used. Might it not be merely the unaccountable transit over a great space and time of a design the original connexion of which had been long forgotten? Evidently not so: the survival (if admitted) is of one highly characteristic form which was soon superseded in antiquity, and it survived nowhere else but in a gaming-piece which preserved, along with the shape, the name of its original - it was, and was never forgotten to be, a chariot. (5) The inference that this chariot, at the time when it was a real chariot, also gave its form and its name to a gaming- piece is difficult to resist. But this is not all. The acute reader may already have noticed that all the lines traced in these pages converge upon one historical point. The "net" in the omen is a Sumerian word (Susgal) and is best illustrated by one of (ctd.)

(1) Manuel dÕarcheologie orientale, i, p. 482.

(2) C. L. WOOLLEY, Ur Excavations, Ths Royal Cemetery, pl. 91.

(3) W. ANDRAE, Die archaischen Ischtar-Tempel in Assur, Tafel 61, d. The first modern discovery of these is illustrated by W. K. Loftus, Travels and Researches in Chaldaea and Susiana, p. 359

(4) To narrow somewhat the immense gulf of more than three thousand years between the Sumerian dynasties and medieval Europe one may recall the observed fact that it was precisely models of that remote period which so strongly influenced Romanesque art; see H. FRANKFORT, Cylinder Seals, pp. 316 ff. In particular, Dr. P. Jaeobsthal adda in the American ' Journal itf Archaeology, XLVIII. 350, 'there was always a strong influence upon the West from these Eastern quarters quarters in all things connected with bones and chariots'.

(5) It is hardly necessary to mention here the unmistakably Sumerian chariot which lives for ever in the vast Wain of the night sky.

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the celebrated monuments of Sumerian art; the officer at the head of his company bears a Sumerian name (satam) the Chariot which seems to be perpetuated in the medieval Rooks is a Sumerian chariot, unlike any that succeeded it. Everything in fact, points consistently to the Early Dynastic age in Babylonia as the possible origin of a board game with 'reticular' squares, a 'row' of which might be called the nver, employing named and different pieces which included a 'company' of men-at-arms under some 'officer', and also 'chariots'. Such a game must necessarily be a war-game, and the language of the omen is suggestive of a warlike operation which is perfectly appropriate, since liver-divination, in the whole of antiquity was essentlally a brand of military science. In view of all this it would not be surprising if future discoveries (and possibly existing evidence so far undetected) should confirm that the age which has been increasingly revealed as the most brilliant and most creative in Babylonian history invented also a game which reappeared in the medieval Orient as Chess.

Merely to gather up the remaining Babylonian hints in the History of Chess one one may observe that the Byzantine dream book quoted on p. 165 is in form descendant of the Assyrian dream omens preserved in the royal library of Nineveh in the eighth to seventh centuries before Christ. This is of course quite a different thing from inferring that any part of its matter may have come down from that source. The statement of Anna Comnena (p. 166) that Chess was invented 'from the luxury of the Assyrians', and the even more explicit attribution of it to Evil Merodach by a thirteenth century Italian preacher (p.541) are certainly not evidence.

Additional note to p.66. Another translation of this omen been offered by H.G. Guterbock m Z.A. xLii. 61, but it does not differ materially from that which is criticized here.

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Illustrations:

Fig.1. Chinese chessboard, divided by The River

Fig. 2. Sumerian net, from the Stele of the Vultures

Fig. 3. The Royal Standard of Ur

Fig 4. The Royal Game of Ur - 20 Squares

 

Special thanks to Ken Whyld and Dr. Ricardo Calvo for supplying Goddesschess with this important research document.