The Lewis Chessmen

These figures are part of a hoard (a group of objects that were hidden to keep them safe). They are chess pieces, carved to look like kings, queens, bishops and other characters.

They were found in a sand dune at Uig Bay on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland. Nobody is sure who made them, who owned them, why they were hidden or exactly when they were found.

But experts think they might have belonged to a trader who was travelling from Norway to Ireland to sell them, sometime between AD 1150-1200. Around this time, chess was a very popular game in Europe.

About the Lewis
chesspieces

From: Norway
Found: Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland (before 1831)

Date: about AD 1150-1200

Made of: Walrus tusks and whale teeth
Find them in the Museum: Room 40

The famous chess pieces

The Lewis chess pieces are very popular and famous around the world. They have even been in a film! Models of the chess pieces were used in the game of Wizard chess which Harry Potter and Ron Weasley play in the film Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
Carefully carved

The carving is not exactly the same on all the pieces so they were probably made by more than one person. But all the carving is beautiful. The backs of the royal thrones have a lot of detail and each one has a different pattern. The patterns are made with curly lines which wiggle in and out of each other.
Don't touch the dentine!

This is the underneath of one of the pawn pieces. You can clearly see the eight sides that make the octagon shape. You can also see the core of the tusk which is called dentine. It is very soft and hard to carve so the person making the piece had to be careful not to cut into it.
Queens of fashion

The queens all sit on beautiful thrones and wear clothes that were in fashion around AD 1200. This queen is holding a drinking horn in her left hand. She doesn’t look very happy – is she angry? Or worried? Maybe she has a toothache. What do you think?
One of these knights

Not all of the pieces are the same size. You can see that one of these knights on horseback is much larger than the other. This is because the walrus tusk the pieces were carved from becomes smaller towards the tip so the pieces would vary in size. Each of the pieces is slightly different – so each is unique.
Seeing red

Some of the chesspieces, including this bishop, were thought to have been stained red when they were first made. But nobody is sure, and scientific tests on the pieces haven’t given a clear answer. In modern games of chess, one set of pieces is white, and one is black, so the Lewis chess pieces might have been meant to be white and red.
Going berserk!

The chess pieces called rooks are usually shown as a small castle or tower in a modern chess game. But here the rooks are soldiers, each carrying a sword and shield. Look closely and you can see that the soldiers are biting the tops of their shields. These soldiers are known as berserkers – they bite their shields to show that they are full of wild energy and ready for battle.
Chess x-ray

This is an x-ray photograph of one of the knights riding on his horse. The lines on the x-ray show where the ivory has dried out and split over time. The x-ray can be used to check if the knight is damaged or likely to break. It also shows how it is made – carved from a single piece of ivory.
Let battle commence

If you made a board large enough to hold all the Lewis chess pieces arranged for a modern game with 64 squares, the board would be 82 centimetres wide - nearly twice the size of a modern board. This is how the pieces may have looked on their board ready to begin the game. Can you spot the four knight pieces – two on each side – sitting on their horses?
Count tabula

These counters were found with the chess pieces. They are also carved from ivory. They come from a board game called tabula, which had been played since Roman times. Only 14 counters arrived at the British Museum, and it takes 30 to play a game of tabula. The missing counters could have been lost, or maybe taken by the people who found the hoard.
For keeping ancient trousers up

This belt buckle was found with the chess pieces and tabula counters. It is also made from ivory and has beautifully carved decoration on the front. The chess pieces are so famous that people don’t usually know that a belt buckle and the tabula counters were found at the same time.
See them for yourself!

There are 93 chess pieces known to us today – nearly enough to make four full chess sets. 82 of the pieces are in the British Museum, and 11 are in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. They are very popular and every year millions of people come to see them in the museums.