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Chesstories

2007

April 27, 2008

Hardly a springtime theme ... unless you're T.S. Eliot! Nonetheless, recent burial discoveries remind us that every ending is also a new beginning - and like the older games we find included in ritual burials, some secrets of chess lie within the cycles of the seasons. (pdf)

• Was he a Druid?  A follow-up story on the tomb from which the "doctor's game" was excavated in 1996. 

• See: Dr. Ulrich Schadler's article. (pdf) Iron Age mystery of the 'Essex druid' Grave near Colchester could be the first burial site of an ancient mystic ever to be discovered in Britain

• Cleopatra - a name and a mystique that keeps recyling - (like Tina Turner!)

Tomb of Cleopatra and lover to be uncovered
Archaeologists have revealed plans to uncover the 2000 year-old tomb of ancient Egypt's most famous lovers, Cleopatra and the Roman general Mark Antony later this year. Another link via Free Republic

• Representations of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor from the 1963 film "Cleopatra?" Well, er, not exactly, although the resemblance is somewhat uncanny...  This is a piece from the Columbia Museum of Art exhibition of items from the fabulous Petrie Museum (London): 

Dyad
Egypt, late dynasty 18, 1352-1292 B.C.E.
Limestone and pigment
Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology,
University College London.
Photo by Mary Hinkle

• Blast From the Past: Archaeologists excavating the ancient cemetery of Gohar Tepe of Mazandaran, north of Iran, discovered some 600 pieces of bone used in a gambling game inside the tomb of a woman.  From Payvand.com, October 4, 2005!

• No Sacrificial Murder:  The mystery of the Oseberg Viking ship burials of two women solved.  Tests of the bones of two Viking women found in a buried longboat have dispelled 100-year-old suspicions that one was a maid sacrificed to accompany her queen into the afterlife.

• B.C. 'iceman' descendants discovered DNA shows 17 aboriginal people are related to man who lived centuries ago. "Clark and Callaghan are members of the Teslin-Tlingit First Nation, and research shows the iceman moved between the coast and the northern Interior, which would have had him travelling through Teslin-Tlingit traditional territory..."

• See: Tlingit chess pieces

Terminus, endless cycles,
or eternal preservation?

During routine quarry work, an ancient burial cave was discovered in the Philippine island of Mindanao, south of Manila, yielding priceless clay burial artifacts about 2,000 years old.  The latest discovery in the village of Pinol was near another ancient burial site discovered in 1991 where burial jars, shaped in different human forms, had been recovered inside Ayub cave. 

Image:  "Maitum" burial jars discovered at Ayub Cave in 1991, about 1/2 kilometer away from this discovery.  Each jar's facial characteristics is unique.

April 20, 2008

Tracking the trail of board games history - as written in stone footprints, handprints
and cupholes dotting the world landscape...

• LONDON, (CAIS) -- April 19, 2008 - An ancient four-pointed compass-rose showing directions of ‘four cardinal points’ and a number of board-games carved on rocks discovered in the Iranian island of Kharg in the Persian Gulf, reported Persian service of CHN on Saturday.

• "The history of backgammon is long, complicated, very incomplete - and fascinating. The exact origins of the game remain unknown, though there is much conjecture, a good deal of it both ingenious and farfetched." Oswald Jacoby / John Crawford, 1970

• Goddesschess wanders innocently into the fray! Although the name "backgammon" is claimed to be of English origin, what of the "Ammon" in Backgammon? Were English Tudors truly detached from ritual Egyptian and African backgrounds to Western coronation ritual - or just playing games? Why then does Shakespeare "see Helen in a brow of Egypt"?

"Ammon: Greek name of an Egyptian oracle god, whose main sanctuary was at Siwa in the Libyan desert. Ammon became famous because Alexander the Great claimed to be his son. Ergo - the possibilty that: Ba + Akh = Ammon -- thereby echoing an ancient formula appropriate to the Egyptian senet game's promotional venue.

• At Petra - more cupholes: At the Second Annual Conference for Nabataean Studies, Dr. Bilal Khrisat of the Hashemite University, presented a paper that introduced the conference to the various board games that are found in ancient Petra. That paper was also responsible for introducing Nabataea.net to this fascinating aspect about Petra. A second link can be found here...

• Elvina Track Engraving Site Just inside the Kuringai National Park lies one of the largest engraving sites in Australia.

• Board-games and divination in global cultural history a theoretical, comparative and historical perspective on mankala and geomancy in Africa and Asia – Part I Wim van Binsbergen

"The scholarly literature on board-games continues to be dominated by Murray’s (1913, 1952) classic works History of chess and History of board-games other than chess. In the wake of these studies, also subsequent work on board-games has tended to keep aloof of any consideration of the relation between board-games and divination."

• Board-games and divination in global cultural history a theoretical, comparative and historical perspective on mankala and geomancy in Africa and Asia – Part II Wim van Binsbergen

"The specific imagery of mankala and geomancy is primarily explored within a Neolithic context of animal husbandry, agriculture, hunting, proto-astronomy and the earth cult. The simple formal structure of mankala has tempted several archaeologists to interpret as mankala boards Neolithic cupmarked artefacts; the paper addresses the difficulties involved in such an ascription, and formulates a ritual model for the possible origin of mankala. At this point the paper foreshadows the more extensive and technical argument on cupmarks, mankala and Palaeolithic astronomy."

"You can't get there from here..."

Cupmarks - footprints, handprints and dinosaur tracks... too many bridges too far for chess? Perhaps it all depends upon who is footing the bill for research...

• Walking as Art The Romans were accustomed to carve pairs of footprints on a stone with the inscription pro itu et reditu, "for the journey and return". They used them for protective rites on leaving for a journey and for thanksgiving for a safe return, when the traveller would place his or her feet in the footprints to mark the beginning or end of the undertaking.

• Chess - A Living Fossil Gerhard Josten "Written sources and statuary artefacts on the one hand as well as theories, speculations and legends on the other have formed the more or less well-founded basis for the past thousand years for all those looking for the answer to the question as to how the game of chess came into being."

Jelly Fish

Chess can turn a human brain to jelly and the history of chess seems to have shapeshifting properties that do just about the same thing. Why this preoocupation with the chess octupus and how it evolved? Well... backgammon is thought to be a smaller fish than chess - but... watch where you step!! Those tentacles are poisonous...

• With JellyFish™ the first neural network based backgammon software becomes commercially available. At this time JellyFish™ is significantly stronger than any other backgammon software. The availability of such strong software has a deep impact on the understanding of the game.

Jelly Fish REALLY?!!
"From goo to you" - the wonderul interconnectedness of all life - and boardgames in general ...

• Through a massive analysis of the evolutionary biology of animals it has been suggested that this jellyfish might just be the direct progeny of the first animal on Earth making it the earliest member of the kingdom that includes insects, fish, reptiles, birds, mammals (including humans) and many more or all the ones that belong to the kingdom Animalia.

Normally experts were supposing the sponge to be the first true animal because it is the simplest known, lacking in distinct tissues and nervous system which are two of the jelly characteristics.

Jelly Chess
(the natural evolution - of course!)

• Rubber chess set... Designed by Buro fur Form for umbra this chess set has all the playing pieces made entirely from rubber. You can throw the pieces into your opponent without the fear of hurting him. I’m not saying to do this, but it’s just your insurance if you loose the game and you have a choleric temperament.

April 13. 2008

It's all about one Roman soldier's road and where it leads today!

Roman soldier's gift found - David Ottewell 10/ 4/2008 He was many miles from home - a Roman soldier posted to Manchester, perhaps feeling cold and lonely, longing for loved ones left behind.

It is believed that Aelius Victor may have been a centurion commander posted from Germany - where worship of Hananeftis and Ollototis originates.

• Hananeftis ?

• Hneftafl ? - a venerable board game of 4 warlike goddesses and one besieged king... (and why are we not surprized?)

• Ollototis ?

• Matres ? The Celtic and Germanic Mother Goddesses

• Matrikas ? Matrikas (Sanskrit: lit. "The Mothers"), also called Matara and Matris, are a band of Hindu goddesses, who always appear in a group.

• See also: Icons

• Orissa - (pdf file) a possible location for the origins of chess referred to in H.J.R. Murray's only footnoted entry acknowledging the work of the esteemed Spanish historian Don Jose Brunet y Bellet. Bellet's hypothesis actually cited an Egyptian origin for chess.

• Sixty-four - In one of the religious traditions of India, there are 8 major forms of Devi, the Goddess. These are known as the Ashta Matrikas (8 Mothers.) Each of these has 8 attendants and so we arrive at the number, 64. Each of the 64 can be further correlated to the currents or winds of the human "etheric" body, or viewed as a type of neurotic or unproductive tendency (if not balanced by the others.) 

Bejeweled Anglo-Saxon Burial Suggests Cult
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

April 11, 2008 -- In seventh century England, a woman's jewelry-draped body was laid out on a specially constructed bed and buried in a grave that formed the center of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery, according to British archaeologists who recently excavated the site in Yorkshire. Prior coverage