ON CHESS
II - Origin and antiquity of the game
It has been supposed that the ancient Egyptians were acquainted with chess, or at least with a game bearing some close affinity therewith. Very slight inquiry, however, is sufficient to show that the game represented on the Egyptian monuments is nothing more than a species of draughts. The players are represented sitting on the ground, or on chairs, and the pieces, or men, being ranged in rank, at either end of the table, were probably moved on a chequered board; but, the game being always represented in profile, the exact appearance, or the number of the squares, cannot be given.
The pieces were all of the same size and form, though they varied on different boards, some being; small, others large, with round summits: many were of a lighter and neater shape, like small nine-pins, probably the most fashionable kind, since they were used in the palace of King Remeses. These last seem to have been about one inch and a half high, standing on a circular base of half an inch in diameter; and one in my possession, which I brought from Thebes, of a nearly similar taste, is one inch and a quarter in height, and little more than half an inch broad at the lower end. It is of hard wood, and was doubtless painted of some colour, like those occurring on the Egyptian monuments.
They were all of equal size upon the same board, one get black, the other white or red, standing on opposite sides; and each player, raising it with the finger and thumb, advanced this piece towards those of his opponent; but though we are unable to say if this was done in a direct or diagonal line, there is reason to believe they could not take backwards, as in the Polish game of draughts, the men being mixed together on the board.
It was an amusement common in the houses of the lower classes, and in the mansions of the rich; and King Remeses is himself pourtrayed on the walls of his palace at Thebes engaged in the game of draughts.
The modern Egyptians have a game of draughts very similar, in the appearance of the men, to that of their ancestors, which they call dámeh, and play much in the same manner as our own.
 The most impartial authorities are strongly inclined to favour the assumption that chess was originally invented in India, and thence transmitted to the nations of Europe, by means of the Persians and Arabs. The instruments of its introduction to the western world are generally supposed to have been the crusaders; but as this supposition necessarily excludes all knowledge of the game previous to the year 1100, it is liable to very formidable objections.
An eastern historian informs us that the game was known at Constantinople in the year of our Lord 802. At that period the Emperor Nicephorus began his reign, and made a pointed allusion to the game of chess in an epistle to the Caliph Haroun al Raschid. "The queen," said he, speaking of Irene, the mother of Constantine, "to whom I have succeeded, considered you as a rook, and herself as a pawn. That pusillanimous female submitted therefore to pay to thee a tribute, the double of which she ought to have exacted from thyself." The game being thus familiar at Constantinople at that early period, it is extremely probable that the knowledge of it was speedily transmitted to other parts of Europe; and the intercourse maintained between the courts of Constantinople and France renders it extremely probable that the latter kingdom was one of the first, if not the very first, in Western Europe, to become acquainted with chess. It is singularly confirmative of this supposition that a set of ivory chess-men, of great antiquity, are still preserved in the Cabinet of Antiquities, in the Bibliothèque du Roi, at Paris, and that in the history of the Abbey of St. Denis, where they were formerly deposited, there should be found the following notice: "L' Empereur & Roy de France,
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Sainct Charlemagne, a donné au Thresor de Sainct Dénys un jeu d'eschets, avec le tablier, le tout d'yvoire: iceux eschets hauts d'une pauline, fort estimez; le dit tablier et une partie des eschets ont esté perdus par succession de temps, et est bien vray semblable qu'ils ont esté apportez de l'Orient, et sous les gros eschets il y a des caractères Arabesques." The dresses and ornaments of the two principal figures in this set are declared by Sir F. Madden to be in strict keeping with the costume of the Greeks in the ninth century, so that, having examined the engravings given of the king and queen, he is persuaded that these chess-men really belong to the period assigned to them by tradition, and believes them to have been executed at Constantinople, by an Asiatic Greek, and sent as a present to Charlemagne, either by the Empress Irene, or by her successor Nicephorus. Embassies were frequently despatched by the Frankish monarch to the court of Constantinople, and that sort of friendly intercourse was maintained which increases the probability of the above supposition. The size and workmanship of the chess-men prove them to have been designed for the use of some noble personage, and from the decided style of Greek art visible in the figures, it is inferred that they came to Charlemagne from a sovereign of the Lower Empire, and were not the gift of the Moorish princes of Spain, or even from the Caliph Haroun al Raschid, whose costly gifts to the Emperor of the West are particularly described by German historians.
The old French romances abound with references to the game of chess, in the time of Charlemagne. In one of these, called Guerin de Montglave, the whole story turns upon a game of chess, at which Charlemagne los't his kingdom to Guerin, the latter having proposed a game at which the stake was to be the kingdom of France. Another romance, describing the arrest of Duke Richard of Normandy, says that he was playing at chess with Ivonnet, son of Regnaut, and the officers came up to him, saying, "Aryse up, Duke Rycharde; for in dispite of Charlemayne, that loveth you so muche, ye shall be hanged now." "When Duke Rycharde saw that these sergeauntes had him thus by the arm, and helde in his hande a lady (dame) of ¡very, where he would have given a mate to Yonnet, he withdrew his arme, and gave to one of the sergeauntes such a stroke with it into the forehead that he made him tumble over and over at his feet; and then he took a rooke, (roc,) and smote another all upon his head, that he all to brost it to the brayne."
Instances may be multiplied to disprove the common opinion that chess was not introduced into Europe until after the first crusade. We will quote one more example, and this is from the Epistles of Damiano, Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, who died in 1080. In a letter to Pope Alexander the Second, (1061-1073,) he mentions an incident which occurred between himself and a bishop of Florence.
Whilst we were dwelling together, having arrived in the evening at a resting-place, I withdrew myself to the neighbouring cell of a priest; but he remained with a crowd of people in a large house of entertainment. In the morning my servant informed me that the bishop had been playing at the game of chess; which thing when I beard, it pierced to my heart like an arrow. At a convenient hour I sent for him, and said, in a tone of severe reproof, "The hand is stretched out; the rod is ready for the back of the offender." "Let the fault be proved," said he, "and penance shall not be refused." "Was it well," rejoined I, "was it worthy of the character you bear, to spend the evening in the vanity of chess-play, and defile the hands and tongue which ought to be the mediators between man and the Deity? Are you not aware that, by the canonical law, bishops who are dice players are ordered to be suspended?" He however, seeking an excuse from the name of the game, and sheltering himself under this shield, suggested that dice were one thing and chess another; consequently that dice alone were forbidden by the canon, but chess tacitly allowed. To which I replied thus, "Chess is not named in the text, but is comprehended under the general term of dice. Wherefore, since dice are prohibited, and chess is not expressly mentioned, it follows without doubt that both kinds of play are included under one term, and equally condemned." To this the poor prelate could make no reply, and was ordered by his superior, by way of penance for his offence, to repeat the Psalter over thrice, and to wash the feet of, and give alms to, twelve poor persons.
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Chess Archeology 
