The history of the game of chess spans nearly 1500 years. It appeared first in India as Chaturanga, then in Persia as Shatranj, and was carried under the same name through the Muslim world and thus towards Europe. A “king” in Persian is a shah, and upon defeating an opponent’s king one would declare shah mat: “the king is dead”. It is this phrase from which the modern “check-mate” survives. Such continuities of the language in chess parallel the continuity of its forms: a game of chess requires a board of 64 squares, and 32 game pieces divided into two teams. Each player takes turns in succession, moving one piece at a time. The names and moves of various pieces have changed repeatedly throughout history, but as with its structure and language, the goal has remained: kill the king.

Chess has been considered and analysed by generals and merchants, by kings and servants, by philosophers and linguists, by economists and mathematicians and computer scientists, and by musicians and artists and authors. It has also, of course, been a subject of study for historians and archeologists. On its march through centuries of human societies, the game has left behind a trail of vastly differing little artifacts. Some are representational, others abstract. Some highly complex, others simple. They have been composed of minerals, plant and animal tissues, glass, metals, plastics, and more.

In all these artifacts and their variations, a great many stories unfold. The ancient networks of trade and technology and artisanship, the contrasts between Christian iconography and Muslim aniconism, evolving interpretations of nobility and clergy, the influences of chess by and upon warfare. There are both accounts of humanity’s material history, as well as tales of artistic influence, of political and religious thought, and of real-world strife and conflict.

A story of the chessman’s life itself has always necessarily been one and the same: it moves a number of spaces on a game board. That is its purpose and function, and it has little practical utility otherwise. It of course does not feel or see or know itself, nor the pieces beside it nor the board beneath it. The chessman as an artifact, however, as surely as the vase or the coin, bears witness to all that may have surrounded it: a historical value which is made perhaps only somewhat more poetic by the life, character, and death attributed to it as a game piece. The small armies of chessmen shown below, and those like and unlike them around the world, hold among themselves thousands of historical stories to repeat back to us.