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The elephant of Yūsuf al-Bāhilī, known as the Chessman of Charlemagne [1] or Eléphant de Charlemagne, [2] is an ivory sculpture, possibly part of a chess set and probably carved in Sindh in the 9th century AD. It has been in Paris since at least the 16th century.
[13] [14] Chess-variant theorist Ralph Betza identified the 'leveling effect', which causes reduction of the value of stronger pieces in the presence of opponent weaker pieces, due to the latter interdicting access to part of the board for the former in order to prevent the value difference from evaporating by 1-for-1 trading. This effect ...
Walrus ivory, also known as morse, [1] comes from two modified upper canines of a walrus. The tusks grow throughout life and may, in the Pacific walrus, attain a length of one metre. [ 2 ] Walrus teeth are commercially carved and traded; the average walrus tooth has a rounded, irregular peg shape and is approximately 5 cm in length.
Ivory trade in Ghana, 1690. Elephant ivory has been exported from Africa and Asia for millennia with records going back to the 14th century BCE.Transport of the heavy commodity was always difficult, and with the establishment of the early-modern slave trades from East and West Africa, freshly captured slaves were used to carry the heavy tusks to the ports where both the tusks and their ...
The Lewis chessmen (Scottish Gaelic: Fir-thàilisg Leòdhais [fiɾʲˈhaːlɪʃkʲ loː.ɪʃ]) or Uig chessmen, named after the island or the bay where they were found, [1] are a group of distinctive 12th-century chess pieces, along with other game pieces, most of which are carved from walrus ivory.
Queen. The legend regarding the set states that these chessmen were given as a gift to Charlemagne by Caliph Harun al-Rashid, [3] who was an avid chess player. The fact that the set displays elephants instead of bishops and chariots instead of rooks denotes a form of the Perso-Arabic game known as Shatranj, itself coming from the original Indian Chaturanga (which compound word means the 'Four ...
Engraved on the tooth is a picture of the ship Francis, which artist Fred Myrick served on during the early 1800s. Now, sperm whales are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. So, in ...
Ivory from Africa came from one of two types of elephant in Africa; the more desirable bush elephant with larger and heavier tusks or the forest elephant with smaller and straighter tusks. [2] Ivory tusks as well as ivory objects such as carved masks, salt cellars, oliphants and other emblems of importance have been traded and used as gifts and ...