The World's Oldest Chess Pieces "Afrosiab Set"

Photo of the famous pieces found at
Afrasiab (near modern-day Samarkand)

Although there is scholarly disagreement about where chess originated - Central Asia, India, the Persian empire, and China are all contenders - it is certain that the game spread along the Great Silk Road. Indeed, the earliest, recognisable chess pieces, dated to about 760 AD were excavated at Afrosiabs north of present-day Samarkand in 1977 by a team led by Archaeologist Prof. Yuri Buryakov's from the Uzbek SSR Academy of Archaeology. (NB: A coin, dated 761 was found with the chess pieces)

This find a sensational at the time included seven chess pieces. They were heavily worn, but clearly identifiable as two foot soldiers with shields and short swords (= our pawns); a war elephant with chain armour and a rider in full battle-dress (= our bishop); a visier (= our queen) with two horses with two mounted riders with sword and shield (= knights); and the Shah, on a three-horse chariot, holding a mace his symbol of power (= our king). The rukh (rook) also features a three-horse chariot with two men, one driving, and the other armed with sword and shield.

 

The set has five out of the six types of pieces, and are completely convincing as a chess set, being made at the end of the Sassanid Empire just before the Arabic conquest they are representational unlike later Arabic sets which used abstract shapes, in accordance with Islamic religious teaching.

 

Some other older statuettes which were also found in Uzbekistan are occasionally named as the worlds oldest chess pieces. They are figurines of an elephant and a zebu bull excavated in 1972 at Dalverzin-Tepe an ancient citadel of the Kushan empire located in Southern Uzbekistan, and stem from the 2nd century. The Elephant is about 2.4 cm high and the Bull is about 1.8 cm high. Some historians believe that they could also be toys or amulets which is quite possible. Also, it has been noticed that there is no Bull in the chess. Most chess historians feel as such that they are probably not Chess pieces, but probably belonged to a forerunner of Chess. They are kept in Tashkent.

 

Sources: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chess and

http://history.chess.free.fr/first-persian-russian.htm

 

 

Afrasiab Chessmen

Rukh (Chariot) in ivory from Afrasiab, about 7th/8th century, Uzbekistan State Museum, Samarkand(from "Roi des jeux, jeu des rois, les échecs", Jean-Michel Péchiné, Gallimard)

Afrasiab, the king of all Turan, is still an emblem of the Turkic peoples. His name is mentioned in the classic epic poem the Shahnameh ('The Book of Kings') written by the great persian poet Ferdowsi between c.917 and 1100 AD. In the epic the legendary hero-king Afrasiab battles a legendary Iranian king, the righteous Manuchehr. Al Biruni chronicals tells us that the Khwarezmian calendar starts with the arrival of Sijavus around 1300 BC, and it is thought that the two may be the same person. According to Firdoussi, Afrasiab is the ancestor of the Hephthalites, and the name apparently has also appeared in the Uighur dynastical lists as well as being claimed as an ancestor of the Kara-Khanids.

Firdoussi's Shahnamrh is still considered very important to the contemporary adherents of Zoroastrianism, in that it traces the historical links between the beginnings of their religion up to the death of the last Zoroastrian rulers during the Muslim conquest of Central Asia.

In 1977 the archaelogist and historian Prof. Jurij F. Burjakov found the oldest surviving set of chessmen (seven ivory pieces) in Afrasiab near Samarkand known as the "Afrasaiab Chessmen". He dated them as being from early in the 8th century AD. They most probably were made some years before around 761AD because a coin so dated belonged to the same layer in the excavation layer where they were found.



Chessmen of Afrasiab