# Chess

> A battle of pieces with different moves

- Date: c. 600
- Era: Middle Ages
- Domain: [Textiles & Everyday Life](https://lastcodex.org/en/domains/everyday/)
- Rebuild stage: II (Settlement)
- Difficulty: 2/5
- URL: https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/chess/

Chess is a game for two players on a board of 64 squares, each with sixteen pieces of six kinds that move in different ways. The aim is to trap the opposing king. The game is first named in Persian and Sanskrit texts of about 600, it reached Europe through the Islamic world, and its modern form dates from the late 15th century, when the queen and the bishop gained their long moves.

![Chess · A battle of pieces with different moves](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/plate.YeebQsCW_ZhA3rQ.webp)

## Legend

1. Board of 64 squares, light square in each player's right-hand corner
2. King
3. Queen
4. Bishop
5. Knight: carved head on a turned base
6. Rook

## What it is

Chess is played by two people on a square board of eight rows of eight squares, coloured light and dark in turn, with a light square in the corner at each player's right. Each side has sixteen pieces: a king, a queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights and eight pawns, set out on the two rows nearest the player. White moves first, and the players then take turns, one move each.

Every kind of piece has a move of its own, and the game turns on how they work together. The aim is checkmate: to attack the opposing king so that it has no way out. The king is never taken off the board. The game is won when the king is trapped, however many pieces remain on either side.

## How it works

![A chessboard in perspective with a dark knight on a central square and eight small round counters on the eight squares it can reach](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/v3.C1nzH2H6_2tHT0n.webp)
_The knight jumps to a square two steps along a row or column and one to the side._

The rook moves any distance along its row or column, the bishop any distance along a diagonal, and the queen in either way. None of the three may pass over another piece. The king moves one square in any direction. The knight jumps to a square two steps along a row or column and one to the side, passing over whatever stands between. The pawn moves straight ahead one square onto an empty square, or two on its first move if both squares are empty, and captures one square diagonally forward. A piece captures by moving onto a square occupied by an enemy piece, which is removed.

When the king is attacked, it is in check, and the player must end the threat at once by moving the king, blocking the line of attack or capturing the attacker. No move may leave one's own king in check. If there is no way out, the king is checkmated and the game is lost. If the player to move has no legal move but is not in check, the game is a draw, called stalemate.

Three special moves complete the rules. A pawn that reaches the far row is exchanged at once for a queen, rook, bishop or knight of its colour. Once in a game, if neither the king nor the rook concerned has yet moved, the king may castle: it moves two squares towards that rook, and the rook jumps over to the square beside it. Castling is not allowed out of, through or into check, nor with pieces in between. A pawn that has just made a two-square advance past an enemy pawn can be captured by it as if it had moved one square, on the next move only. This is called taking in passing, or en passant.

## How to do it

A board and a set of pieces can be made with simple hand tools. For the board, take a flat panel of plywood or close-grained wood and draw a grid of eight by eight squares, each a little wider than the base of the largest piece. Paint or stain every other square dark, starting with a light square in the corners at the players' right, and seal the surface with varnish or oil when dry. Squares of veneer glued down in turn give a finer board.

![A wooden dowel clamped in a bench vice and sawn into short lengths, with a knife carving the top of a pawn and finished pawns and a rook beside it](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/v2.Dtab7NVy_ZpyiHc.webp)
_Pieces cut from a dowel: the length gives the rank, the knife shapes the top._

Pieces can be cut from a hardwood dowel, one batch left pale and the other stained dark. Cut sixteen lengths per side, keeping a clear order of height: king tallest, then queen, bishop, knight and rook, with the pawns shortest. Shape each top with a knife, a rasp and sandpaper: a small cross for the king, a ring of notches for the queen, a slanted cut for the bishop's mitre, square notches round the top of the rook and a ball for the pawn. The knight's head is easiest to saw out of a small board and glue to a round base. On a [lathe](/en/inventions/lathe/), the bodies can be turned instead, and the tops finished by hand.

Clamp the wood when you saw it, and carve with the edge moving away from your body and from the hand that holds the piece; a cut-resistant glove on that hand helps. On a lathe, wear eye protection, tie back long hair, keep sleeves close, wear no gloves near the turning work and keep the tool rest close to it. Wear a dust mask when sanding, and use stains and varnish in a well-aired room. The small pieces can choke a young child, so keep the set out of reach.

## History and evolution

Chess descends from chaturanga, an Indian game named after the four divisions of an army: foot soldiers, horsemen, elephants and chariots. With a king and a counsellor, they made up each side, on an uncoloured board of eight by eight squares called an ashtapada. The first texts that clearly name the game date from about 600. In the Sanskrit Harshacharita, written in the early 7th century at the court of King Harsha, the poet Bana praises a realm so peaceful that only the ashtapada boards teach the positions of the chaturanga. A Middle Persian romance, the Karnamak, probably composed about the same time, counts chatrang among the skills of Ardashir, founder of the Sasanian dynasty. A later Persian tale says the game came from India under Khosrow I (531–579). The words check and checkmate go back to the Persian calls shah and shah mat.

The oldest pieces identified with confidence are seven small ivory figures found in 1977 at Afrasiab, the ancient site of Samarkand, among them a ruler, an elephant with its rider, horsemen and foot soldiers. They are dated to the 7th century. An ivory piece found in 2002 at Butrint, in Albania, in a house of the second half of the 5th century, was announced as an older chessman, but chess historians have doubted that the game reached Europe so early.

After the Arab conquest of Persia in the 7th century, the game spread through the Islamic world as shatranj. Its rules, set down in Arabic manuscripts, gave the rook and the knight their present moves, while the counsellor stepped only one square diagonally and the elephant leapt two squares diagonally. A pawn reaching the far row became a counsellor, and a player also won by stripping the opposing king of all its pieces.

![Small ivory queen seated on a throne with a carved back, her head resting on her right hand](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/v1.BEoNyaCC_Z2j1zEr.webp)
_A seated queen of walrus ivory, of the 12th-century kind found on Lewis._

The game reached Europe through Italy and Spain no later than the early 10th century, and Latin poems of the 11th century describe it. In Europe the counsellor became a queen, and the elephant took new names, among them bishop in English. European players also began to colour the squares of the board, which an 11th-century poem from the monastery of Einsiedeln presents as an improvement adopted by some players, and which Alfonso X of Castile prescribed in his book of games of 1283. The 78 chessmen found in 1831 on the Isle of Lewis, carved in the 12th century, mostly from walrus ivory and a few from whale teeth, include seated kings and queens, bishops with croziers and rooks shown as warriors on foot.

In the late 15th century the queen received its present move along rows, columns and diagonals, and the bishop its long diagonal. The oldest known text with the new rules is Scachs d'amor, a poem in Valencian by Francí de Castellví, Narcís Vinyoles and Bernat Fenollar, which José Antonio Garzón dates to 1475; it already allows taking in passing. H. J. R. Murray, writing in 1913, placed the change no earlier than 1485 and thought Italy the likelier birthplace. Luis Ramírez de Lucena printed a treatise on the new game at Salamanca in 1497, and within a generation or two the faster game had replaced the old one across Europe.

## Key facts

- Oldest texts naming the game: Middle Persian and Sanskrit, about 600
- Oldest securely identified pieces: Seven ivory figures from Afrasiab, Samarkand, 7th century
- Board: 8 × 8 squares
- Long moves of queen and bishop: Late 15th century, Spain or Italy

## Requires

- [Stone Tools](https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/stone-tools/): The first cutting edge (3.3 million years ago)

## Sources

- [A History of Chess (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1913)](https://archive.org/details/AHistoryOfChessHJRMurray), H. J. R. Murray (scan: Internet Archive)
- [The History of Chess](https://www.worldhistory.org/article/2793/the-history-of-chess/), Howard Burton, World History Encyclopedia (2025)
- [The story of the Lewis chess pieces](https://www.nms.ac.uk/discover-catalogue/the-story-of-the-lewis-chess-pieces), National Museums Scotland
- [Scachs d'amor: The poem that first portrayed the modern rules of chess](https://en.chessbase.com/post/scachs-damor-poem-part-1), Sergio Ernesto Negri, ChessBase (2020)
- [New Moves on Old Boards](https://www.kwabc.org/en/newsitem/new-moves-on-old-boards.html), Ken Whyld Association, Chess History & Literature Society
- [The oldest chess pieces in the world](https://en.chessbase.com/post/oldest-chess-pieces-in-the-world), ChessBase
- [Is Uzbekistan the Homeland of Chess?](https://legacy.uz/en/is-uzbekistan-the-homeland-of-chess/), Legacy.uz
- [Scientists Find Oldest Chess Piece (August 2002)](https://abcnews.com/Technology/story?id=97926), ABC News
- [RIT Photography Professor Documents Ancient European Civilization (September 2002)](https://www.rit.edu/news/rit-photography-professor-documents-ancient-european-civilization), Rochester Institute of Technology
- [Laws of Chess (FIDE Handbook E.01, 2023)](https://handbook.fide.com/chapter/E012023), FIDE, International Chess Federation

Fact-checked on 2026-10-17.

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