![]() If the sandstone piece turns out “not” to be a chess piece after all, then Oleson has to admit that he made a bit of a rookie error. However, Oleson says “it's the likeliest explanation”, considering where it was excavated. Oleson addressed ASOR at a meeting in San Diego last week where, according to Live Science, he said the game probably was “carried westward from India by the movement of merchants and diplomats”, and it is no surprise to the doctor that evidence of the game should be found located on a busy trade route like the one where it was found.Īccording to Oleson, Humayma was inhabited by the powerful Abbasid family who declared themselves “ caliphs” (Islamic rulers claiming succession from the Prophet Muhammad) and it is known that the Abbasid family traded with Syria and Iraq, and Oleson thinks it is plausible that they may have been early adopters of chess.Ĭoncerning “how” the archaeologists know this lump of shaped sandstone was a chess piece, the Live Science report features a 12th century Iranian chess set in which the stone rooks each feature “two pointed horns” representing horse-drawn chariots and they are “nearly identical” to the figurine discovered at Humayma.Įven with this visual match it's impossible to be sure that the twin-horned figure is a rook. ( Public Domain ) The Oldest Chess Piece, Or A Rookie Error? And if this tiny sandstone figurine is proven to be a rook from a chess game, according to Oleson, it’s the single “oldest chess piece ever discovered”.Ī Christian and Muslim playing chess (painting circa 12). In an abstract published by the American Schools of Oriental Research 2019 ( ASOR), Oleson explains that chess was popular throughout the Islamic world and that the word “rook” comes from the word “rukh,” which is the Persian word for chariot, and that there are references to chess-playing in Islamic texts as early as AD 643. With its rectangular body and two curved horn-like protrusions on top, the sandstone figure was excavated from the ruins of a 1,300 years old Islamic settlement in 1991, and alternately to the mini-crenellated castle towers we are familiar with it is thought to represent a horse-drawn chariot.Ĭarved rock believed to be a horned rook from 1300 years ago. Also present at this site are stone tombs dating to the first century, a ruined Roman fort, Byzantine churches and early Islamic mosques. The carved sandstone was found at a site called Humayma, located along a once-prominent trading route in southern Jordan linking India to the Near East and Middle East. But this particular ancient sandstone rook didn’t move anywhere for 1300 years, rather, it lay in the sand below an ancient 7th century trading post in Jordan. John Oleson, an archaeologist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, believes he and his colleagues may have found “a rook”, which in the game of chess can move as many spaces as it can in any one direction. Archaeologists digging in Jordan may have found the oldest chess piece in the world.
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