纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 061刘易斯棋子（3）

 

This week, we're making an almost full turn of the globe around seven or eight hundred years ago, with porcelain¹ in China, sculpture in Africa, and a throne from the Caribbean. We're also in Spain with a Jewish scientific instrument, but in this programme we're in Scandinavia and Scotland. Valuable objects are always markers of high status - but this week's objects show more than just wealth or power; the people who owned them were also showing off knowledge, taste and intellect.

For over five thousand years people have been playing board games, but chess is a relative newcomer - it seems to have been invented in India at some point after the year 500 AD. Over the next couple of hundred years, the game spread through the Middle East and on into Christian² Europe, and in every place, the chess pieces were changed to reflect the society that played it. So in India, there are pieces named "war elephants", while in the Middle East, Islamic reservations about the human image ensured that all the pieces were virtually abstract. European pieces, by contrast, are often intensely human, and the Lewis Chessmen not only appear to show us particular kinds of characters, but strikingly reflect the structures of the great medieval power game as it was fought out across northern Europe, from Iceland and Ireland to Scandinavia and the Baltic.

这套象棋中的六十七枚棋子目前被保存在大英博物馆，另外十一枚在苏格兰国家博物馆。这些备受珍爱的棋子带我们进入中世纪欧洲的腹地。

人类下棋的历史已超过五千年，国际象棋在棋类大家族中较为年轻，似乎是在公元五百年之后创始于印度。在此后的几百年里，它被传播到了中东，接着传入了基督教盛行的欧洲。它每到一个地方都会吸收一些当地风俗，并作出相应改变。比方说，在印度，有一组棋子被命名为“战象”；在中东，因为伊斯兰教对人像的避讳，所有棋子的形象都变得十分抽象；欧洲的情况则刚好相反，棋子的形象被精雕细琢。刘易斯棋子不但展示了特定的人物形象，也反映了中世纪时蔓延于整个北欧，从冰岛、爱尔兰直到斯堪的纳维亚和波罗的海的权力游戏的结构。

 

1 porcelain   

n.瓷；adj.瓷的，瓷制的

参考例句：

• These porcelain plates have rather original designs on them.这些瓷盘的花纹很别致。
• The porcelain vase is enveloped in cotton.瓷花瓶用棉花裹着。

2 Christian   

adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒

参考例句：

• They always addressed each other by their Christian name.他们总是以教名互相称呼。
• His mother is a sincere Christian.他母亲是个虔诚的基督教徒。