Medieval game pieces emerge from the ruins of a German castle

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/medieval-game-pieces-emerge-from-the-ruins-of-a-mysterious-german-castle-2497815

208 98 2 years ago

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That 'horse' looks like a bishop to me. The head is far more person-shaped than horse-shaped. And that necklace - surely homage to a surplice or other ecclesiastical garb or jewelry?

duxup• 2 years ago

I am thinking a horse with possibly some sort of head covering / armor with cutouts for the eyes. Thus the triangle shape.

Possibly a horse's mane in the back:

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/knight-in-chess-springer-ein...

jcynix• 2 years ago

Horses where "decorated" with cloth in medieval times, cf. this image

https://fotos.mediafreedom.at/theater/sonstiges/xl/31-honori...

Symbiote• 2 years ago

The caparison also served as a light armour, which could deflect or reduce the impact of arrows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caparison

xandrius• 2 years ago

Absolutely a bishop to me too but hey, who knows.

furyofantares2• 2 years ago

Historians

pdw• 2 years ago

This chess piece likely predates the introduction of the bishop. The set would have had elephants instead, which would have been depicted with two tusks. See e.g. https://www.thehistoricgamesshop.co.uk/early-medieval-chess....

shagie3• 2 years ago

From https://www.lovecpokladu.cz/en/home/the-mystery-of-medieval-...

https://www.lovecpokladu.cz/img/2023/gm4pro/Sandomierzské%20...

In that set you can see the rook being castle like on the end, the knight with a "triangular stick out head thing" and an elephant which has two bumps that at first glance made me think breasts rather than tusks. Then the inner two pieces with the king and queen.

The triangular head, however, is that of a horse's head rather than an upside-down miter or jewelry.

Another view of it from a different angle - https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FsPKPECX0AEwYP6?format=jpg&name=...

The bishop itself was a later introduction - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_(chess)

The bishop's predecessor in medieval chess, shatranj (originally chaturanga), was the alfil, meaning "elephant", which could leap two squares along any diagonal, and could jump over an intervening piece. As a consequence, each fil was restricted to eight squares, and no fil could attack another. The modern bishop first appeared shortly after 1200 in Courier chess.

JoeAltmaier3• 2 years ago

The 'boobs' could be just that, representing the queen.

That 'chess set' isn't even symmetrical! Two with triangular 'heads', one with 'boobs', one with a square projection!

Couldn't those two with grooves represent bishops? More typical of a mitre than a crown, but hey this was Germany, maybe that's correct there. And yeah, that last link to the early 'bishop' has a slot cut in it too.

Unless they found it with the board set up, then I'm gonna have doubts about any conclusions about correlations with modern chess pieces.

AdmiralAsshat• 2 years ago

I, too, initially thought the 'horse' piece was a person with cartoonish eyes similar to the Lewis chessmen:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_chessmen#/media/File:Lew...

joshuaheard• 2 years ago

Looking at some of the links to other finds, it looks like only one of the players' pieces has the "eyes". I wonder if that is an insignia to differentiate the players since I don't see a color difference.

boredhedgehog• 2 years ago

The 'Bishop' theme for that piece is an English peculiarity. It doesn't exist in any other language.

globalise83• 2 years ago

I do find it amazing that even in a place like Germany with excellent state-level surveying and archaeology services, as well as at least two centuries of enthusiastic amateurs, there are still undiscovered castles lurking in the forests...

hollerith• 2 years ago

There aren't. I'm guessing you live in a country with vast tracts of wilderness like the US or Canada. Germany is not like that.

This archeological site is a pile of rocks that once was a castle. (The rocks are probably mixed with dirt and plant life and might have been completely buried.)

fumeux_fume• 2 years ago

I don't think the parent comment meant fully formed, intact castles, but rather the ruins of them.

Swizec2• 2 years ago

there are still undiscovered castles lurking in the forests

As with all anthropology/archaeology, there is a big difference between “discovered” [by science] and “known” [by the locals]. The locals most certainly know of every castle and even those castles that are now ruins probably have local legends/stories of how there used to be a castle in such and such place.

But none of that counts until an archaeologist/anthropologist comes and writes it down. They then bombastically proclaim to have discovered a thing! (that all the locals already knew about for decades/centuries)

Sauce: my partner studied anthropology and this was a running joke in her program. It is very rare for an academic to be the first to discover anything. Usually they get tipped off by someone local who doesn’t count

usrusr2• 2 years ago

While there can certainly be case where items of local knowledge haven't been cataloged by (recent) science, I think that you are giving far too much credit to that side. It's not as if there was much oral tradition going on with ancient stories passed on from generation to generation, that just doesn't happen all that much in a place that had print media or better for half a millennium.

What we do have is knowledge encloded in place names ("Burgstall"), but locals won't be any wiser about the history of the thing unless they happen to be the type of person who collects and consumes books written by local history science buffs of earlier generations.

A chance discovery like this usually happens when some known (usually to science far more than to locals!) but not recently disturbed site has to make room for an infrastructure project and the archeologists are sent in to make use of the last chance to see.

lelanthran• 2 years ago

They then bombastically proclaim to have discovered a thing! (that all the locals already knew about for decades/centuries)

Medieval game pieces emerge from the ruins of a German castle

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