Saturday, January 28, 2017

Lewis Chessmen


We just learned about the Cloisters Cross.

Another ancient sculpture is the Lewis Chessmen.

This is a set of 78 chess pieces carved from walrus ivory tusks or whale teeth.
No one is sure exactly how old they are, but they think they were from around 900 years ago in the country of Norway.

There are some red stains on some of the pieces, so they were probably a chess set of red versus white, instead of black versus white.
All of the pieces are little people, even the knights, bishops and rooks.

The knight pieces are on little horses and are holding spears and shields.
The rooks are standing soldiers holding shields and swords.
Some of them have crazy wild eyes and are so angry they are biting their shields!




(from: wikipedia - lewis chessmen)


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