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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
The Lewis chess pieces were discovered in 1831, at Uig Bay on Lewis, in a small stone chamber1 concealed2 in a sandbank. By far the most likely explanation for their being there, is that they were hidden for safety by a merchant, who may have been intending to sell them on Lewis itself. A thirteenth-century poem, for example, names a powerful figure, Angus Mor of Islay, as King of Lewis, and has him inheriting his father's set of ivory chess pieces:
"To you he left his position, yours his breastplate ... each treasure ... his slender swords, his brown ivory chessmen."
By playing chess, a ruler like Angus Mor indicated that although his local power base was on the extreme outer edge of the continent, he was nonetheless part of an elite3 high culture that embraced all the courts of Europe. And the figure on the board that more than any other represents those European courts is, of course, the queen.
Unlike Islamic society, where the rulers' wives would generally have remained hidden from public view, the European queen enjoyed a public role and the high status of adviser4 to the king. So, on the Islamic chess board the king is accompanied by his male adviser, the vizier, while the European king sits beside his queen. In the Lewis chess pieces, the queens all sit staring into the distance, holding their chin in their right hand - suggesting to their contemporaries intense thought and wise counsel, but to us looking comically glum5.
1 chamber | |
n.房间,寝室;会议厅;议院;会所 | |
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2 concealed | |
a.隐藏的,隐蔽的 | |
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3 elite | |
n.精英阶层;实力集团;adj.杰出的,卓越的 | |
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4 adviser | |
n.劝告者,顾问 | |
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5 glum | |
adj.闷闷不乐的,阴郁的 | |
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