The Extraordinary Origins of Chess: Irving Finkel & Sushma Jansari, The Portico Library, 2021
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Published 2021-02-25
During their 2021 exhibition 'Fun & Games: playtime, past and present', The Portico Library hosted this online event on the Indian, Persian and Arab roots of the world's most famous game of strategy, chess. This was a pay-what-you-can event in association with MACFEST Festival of Muslim Arts & Culture supporting The Portico Library's free public arts and education programmes.
Dr Sushma Jansari is the Tabor Foundation Curator: South Asia, at the British Museum. She was instrumental in the redevelopment of the British Museum’s Sir Joseph Hotung Gallery of China and South Asia which opened in 2017 and is currently lead curator in the team developing the Manchester Museum South Asia Gallery in partnership with the British Museum (opening 2022). Sushma is also writing a book for UCL Press titled 'Chandragupta Maurya: the creation of a national hero in India'.
Irving Finkel is a Senior Curator in the Middle East Department at the British Museum, where he is in charge of the cuneiform tablet collection. He is also a specialist in the history of ancient board games and edited 'Board Games in Perspective'. He deciphered the rules for the Royal Game of Ur, the national board game of Ancient Mesopotamia.
'Opening Moves: The Extraordinary Origins of Chess' was hosted by The Portico Library's Exhibitions and Programmes Curator James Moss.
You can enjoy the online version of the full 'Fun & Games' exhibition at www.theportico.org.uk/fun-and-games.
All Comments (21)
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I am surprised Finkel does not have 5x the amount of shared content online. The world needs way more Finkel.
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“When the game is over, the king and the pawn go back into the same box.”-Cortana
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Irving Finkel never ceases to amaze, fascinate, educate and entertain me. What a scholar. It is very unusual to have someone who is so well read in so many different fields - and so passionate about all of them. He should really have a regular show, kind of as the (ancient) history teacher of the world.
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I lived in Korea back in the 1970s where I learned to play janggi, the Korean descendent of Chaturanga, the Indian ancestor of chess. I liked the way guys would play it in the street, squatting down with the game between them, the board made from any old piece of plywood with lines drawn on it and the playing pieces were made from disks cut out of an old broom handle. And they never played it slowly, contemplating every move. They played like maniacs
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I hope someone is filming Dr Finkel every day. What a treasure he is to the human race!
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Elephants, chariots, horses, you say. I played chess against an Indian opponent a couple of summers ago on a giant chess set, and he called the rooks cannons, which I thought was fantastic, because they do fire in a straight line until they hit something. I think he did call the Knights elephants, and I don't remember what he called the bishops.
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He's a gem he really is
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We always learn loads when Irving gives a talk. He's an absolute goldmine.
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When Anand was champion, there was a huge upswing in people stopping to play cricket and play chess for five minutes instead. Very accurate indeed
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When I was a boy (I am a few years older than Dr. Finkel) I could never win, or even compete with, my elder brother at chess--so I gave it up as a lost cause. There was a time when I had someone with whom to play Go--the East Asian board game--and that was very interesting, but after several years we went our different ways.
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Fun fact, in spanish the elephant is still called the "Alfil" :D
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I have been married to a wonderful lady for 36 years now. It very nearly never happened because we once, foolishly, played a game of Monopoly.
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YAY! Irving Finkel! Never can get enough of him.
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Irving Finkel <3
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Do enjoy your talks Irving, you sure squired a massive amount of information, love the story telling not many people have gift to make things enjoyable at the same time learning..
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There is a wonderful collection of chess pieces at Maryhill Museum of Art in the Columbia Gorge, Washington State, USA
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The tale of innumerable grains on a chess board is familiar to virtually everyone in Russia. Chess used to be big here, and our math teachers and pop-science writers used this story to illustrate very large numbers. (by the way, chess are called shahmaty in Russian, from the Persian "Shah Mat", the King's dead, as mentioned here.)
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The visage of Irving Finkle revs up my desire to learn yet humbles my present knowledge of whatever subject he speaks. Listen and learn. And laugh!
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The ebony and ivory material change causing sets to become black and white makes sense. Possibly because those were also the materials used for pianos and so maybe were available for carving.
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9:25 couldn't resist, and calculated a rough estimation on that: rice grain: ~ 2mm x 5 mm. British Islands: ~ 250k km sq foot = 0.3048 m br. islands area * 7 feet / rice grain vol. : ~ 27 * 10^9 grains of rice the number of rice grains mentioned is (2^65) - 1 ~ 3.7 * 10 ^ 19 which is over a billion times more... You welcome.
