纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 061刘易斯棋子（7）（在线收听）

The Lewis chess pieces were discovered in 1831, at Uig Bay on Lewis, in a small stone chamber concealed 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 elite 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 adviser 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 glum.