From god or from the devil. Playing cards - European history of playing cards Who invented card games
Very long time invention playing cards was attributed to the 14th-century French painter Jacqueline Grangonner, who allegedly first invented these small painted cardboard sheets. And he did this in order to amuse them with Charles VI in the moments of enlightenment of the darkened mind of His Majesty.
This version was first refuted in the 18th century by two learned writers, the abbes de Longrue and Rive, who convincingly proved in their dissertations that maps and card games appeared long before the reign of this poor sovereign.
The first indisputable proof of this is the original act of the Cologne Cathedral, which forbade the card game for clergy.
This act predates the time when Grangonner handed the maps he had drawn to the insane monarch. The decent fee he received for these cards prompted the artist to be creative, and he began to actively work on improving the design of the cards. He replaced some figures on the maps, and in the reign of Charles VII made further changes to the images on the maps and came up with the names of the figures that they still bear.
So, at the whim of the artist, David, peak king, was the emblem of Charles VII, and the king of hearts was named Charlemagne. Queen Regina in clubs lady portrayed Mary, wife of Charles VII.
Pallas, the Queen of Spades, personified the Virgin of Orleans, Joan of Arc. Rachel, the lady of diamonds - gentle Agnes Sorel, and the lady of hearts Judith - light "in morality" Isabella of Bavaria. Four jack(squires) designated themselves four brave knights: Ogier and Lancelo under Charlemagne, Hector de Gallard and La Hire under Charles VII. And other names of the cards were sustained by the artist in the taste of that time - a warlike allegory. Worms were the emblem of courage, spades and tambourines represented weapons, clubs - food, fodder and ammunition. And finally ace(ac) in its Latin meaning was what has always been recognized as the main wealth of war - money.
The painter Grangonner, thus, although not map inventor, but left to his compatriots and everyone for an inheritance, which in many ways contributed and continues to contribute to the entertainment of people, and not only idle, but also businessmen, and led to a variety of occupations in all strata of society.
The phenomenon of the rapid distribution of maps around the world is unparalleled. Cards are played all over the world. Maps can be a topic of study for a philosopher and psychologist, a statistician and an economist, for a moralist and a clergyman...
It must be admitted that the origin of the cards still shrouded in impenetrable darkness. Scientists realized too late, time managed to destroy monuments that could shed light on the history of maps. However, many learned people devoted most of their lives to the study of the history of playing cards.
But, despite all their efforts, this story is still replete with many white spots, confusing, and it can be said with confidence that hardly anyone will ever be able to find out when the cards actually appeared and when the first players sat down at the playing table for the first time.
What are playing cards made of?
In fact, for a card game it is not necessary to have the playing cards that we currently know: rectangular, oval, round, or some other shape made of thick cardboard. They can be made from wood, leather, ivory, or even metal. Such maps can be seen in many museums around the world. In some countries, and still today, cards are made of wood, in some places of plastic materials in the form of dominoes, especially for such card games as Rams And Canasta. Thus, the material from which the cards are made can be different. The most suitable, however, turned out to be cards made from special paper. Moreover, such paper appeared almost simultaneously in many countries.
If paper was indeed invented in China as early as 105 AD, then apparently paper maps appeared not much later.
There are many legends about the invention of cards. According to one of them, in prehistoric times, a beautiful princess was kidnapped by a robber. While imprisoned, she made cards from leather and taught her enslaver to play them. The robber would allegedly be so enamored with playing cards that he released the princess as a token of gratitude.
One Greek legend attributes the invention of maps to Palamedes, the son of the Euboean king Nauplius, very smart and cunning, who, for example, managed to expose Odysseus himself. Odysseus wanted to stay out of the Greek war against Troy. When Palamedes found him in connection with this. Odysseus pretended to be crazy. And he did it this way: he harnessed a donkey to the plow to his bulls, and began to sow the field not with grains, but sprinkle salt into the furrows. However, Palamedes immediately figured out the deception. He returned to the palace, took from the cradle the son of Odysseus - Telemachus, brought him into the field and put him in a furrow in front of a team of oxen and a donkey. Odysseus, of course, turned aside, giving himself away. This cunning of Palamedes was the basis for various inventions to be attributed to him. He allegedly invented scales, letters, dice, some measures, and during the long-term siege of Troy, playing cards. And it happened 1000 years before our era!
There are researchers who name another person who allegedly invented the cards. He is allegedly one of the seven sages of ancient Greece, namely the philosopher Cylon, who wanted to help the poor forget about food. To do this, he invented cards that the poor began to play and completely forgot about hunger during the game.
The list of legends and tales about the invention of cards can be continued, but it is clear that they are not the invention of a single person.
How were the rules of the old card games developed?
It can be assumed that these were, first of all, combination games like the current games of Rams and Canasta, i.e. such games in which it was considered necessary to combine cards according to pictures, colors, etc. as quickly as possible. This is evidenced by the fact that there were games in which cards were used not only with 3 and 4 images, but also with 5, 6 and big amount. In Korea, they play cards with the image of 8 figures: men, horses, antelopes, rabbits, pheasants, crows, fish and stars. And for each of these figures there are 10 different cards, that is, the deck consists of 80 cards.
The Chinese in the old days even played on depreciated banknotes. Since there were few coins, and a long journey with a lot of money was dangerous, already in the 7th century the state allowed the so-called "flying money". For the wasteful life of their courts, the rulers needed more and more money and ordered to print them in heaps. Money depreciated with catastrophic speed, and it came to the point that in the 9th century they lost all value. Old banknotes were exchanged for new ones in the ratio of 1:100, 1:500, 1:1000, 1:2000... It was at this time that they began to play cards with old money. And these money cards existed in China almost until the end of the 9th century. In China, even now they play cards that depict a general, two advisers, elephants, horses, war chariots, guns, and 5 soldiers. These 16 figures are colored in red, white, yellow and green colors. Each suit is repeated twice, and thus, the total number of cards in the deck is 128 pieces. Characteristic of Chinese maps has always been their shape: they are long and narrow.
Indian cards have a completely different shape, they are square, and sometimes round. Indian cards usually had 4 suits, but there were also 12 color cards, and each color had 12 cards, i.e. the number of cards in the deck was 144.
When playing cards appeared in Russia
Presumably, cards appeared in Russia shortly after their appearance in Europe, in particular in Germany and France. They quickly penetrated primarily into the ruling circles. In any case, already under Anna Ioannovna and Elizabeth Petrovna, card games, especially in court circles, flourished, and card games reached their peak in the reign of Catherine II. It is authentically known that Catherine's grandees played almost all without exception. Many of them put colossal fortunes at stake, while losing lands worth tens of thousands of acres and serfs. Peasants very often, waking up in the morning, found out that, at the whim of the owner, they were lost to another person and become his property. Yard girls, especially beautiful ones, sometimes went on the map for a colossal sum, and along with them hunting dogs and thoroughbred horses went on the map.
There is no exact information about when the cards appeared in Russia. Some researchers believe that this happened rather late, approximately in the second quarter of the 9th century. However, this contradicts other obvious facts. Researcher Yu. Dmitriev reports that back in 1759, the mechanic Pyotr Dyumolin, who arrived in Moscow, demonstrated "moving cards" in one of the houses in the German Quarter. And another Russian researcher A. Vyatkin considers the appearance of maps in Russia to be even more early date, by the 7th century, and substantiates this with the well-known royal code of 1649, in which it was prescribed to deal with the players "like with thieves", that is, with thieves. According to the same Vyatkin, the cards came to Russia through Ukraine, from Germany ("the local Cossacks whiled away the time playing a card game").
The fact that the cards appeared in Russia simultaneously with their arrival in Europe is also evidenced by the fact that the Russians "kept pace" with the Europeans in mastering the secrets of many card games.
Video: History of playing cards
Playing cards are known all over the world. But where and when they appeared, no one knows. Some medieval theologians considered them "devil's fiction" that Satan invented to multiply people's sins. More sensible people argued that this could not be, because the cards were originally used for divination and other magical rituals, that is, for knowing the will of God.
Very curious evidence was cited as evidence, which will certainly be of interest to everyone who has ever picked up a satin deck. According to one version, the invention of cards was attributed to the ancient Egyptian god Thoth, the founder of writing, counting and calendar. With the help of cards, he told people about the four components of the universe fire, water, air and earth, which personify the four card suits. Much later, already in the Middle Ages, Jewish Kabbalists concretized this ancient message. According to them, the suits embody four classes of elemental spirits: tambourines fire spirits of salamanders, worms overlords air elements sylphs, clubs water spirits undines and peaks lords of the underworld of the dwarves.
Other medieval mystics believed that the cards symbolized the four "main aspects of human nature": the suit of hearts represents love; clubs desire for knowledge; tambourines are a passion for money, and peaks warn of death. The extraordinary variety of card games, the complex logic of relationships and subordination, the alternation of ups and downs, sudden failures and amazing luck reflects our life in all its complexity and unpredictability. From here comes the bewitching power of excitement, lurking in them to the great indignation of the puritans and hypocrites of all times and peoples, in this sense, neither chess, nor dominoes, and indeed no other games can be compared with cards.
However, no less curious is the version according to which the cards allegedly reflect ... time. In fact, red and black colors are consonant with ideas about day and night. 52 leaves correspond to the number of weeks in a year, and not everyone understands the joker also symbolizes a leap year. The four suits are fully correlated with spring, summer, autumn and winter. If each jack is valued at 11 points (it comes immediately after the ten), the queen at 12, the king at 13, and the ace is taken as one, then the total points in the deck will be 364. Adding a “single” joker, we get the number of days in a year. Well, the number of lunar months 13 corresponds to the number of cards of each suit.
If we descend from the cloudy-foggy heights of mysticism to the soil of reality, then two versions of the origin of the cards seem to be the most probable. According to the first, they were created by Indian Brahmins around 800 AD. Another version says that the cards appeared in China in the 8th century during the reign of the Tang dynasty. The fact is that paper money served the subjects of the Celestial Empire not only for settlements, but also for gambling. In addition to digital nominations, the banknotes depicted emperors, their wives, and provincial governors, which denoted the value of a particular banknote. And since the players did not always have enough banknotes, they used duplicates drawn on pieces of paper instead, which eventually forced real money out of the games.
The time of the appearance of maps in Europe is just as uncertain, although most historians agree that they were most likely brought by participants in the Crusades in the 11th-13th centuries. True, it is possible that this subject of excitement appeared on our continent as a result of the invasion of Italy in the 10th century by the Saracens, as the Arabs were then called, from whom the locals borrowed cards. In any case, in 1254 Saint Louis issued an edict banning card games in France under pain of whipping.
In Europe, the Arabic original has undergone significant revision, since the Koran forbade the faithful to draw images of people. Presumably, the birthplace of cards with figures of kings, ladies and squiresjacks was France, where at the turn of the 13th-14th centuries the artist Gregonner painted cardboard sheets for Charles VI.
The earliest known European Tarot deck (sometimes called Tarot or Tarok ed. note) was made in the 14th century in Lombardy. It had four suits, depicted in the form of bowls, swords, money and wands or clubs. Each suit consisted of ten cards with numbers and four pictures: a king, a queen, a knight and a squire. In addition to these 56 cards, it included 22 more trump cards with numbers from 0 to 21, bearing the following names: jester, conjurer, nun, empress, emperor, monk, lover, chariot, justice, hermit, fate, strength, executioner, death, moderation, devil, inn, star, moon, sun, world and judgment seat.
As the popularity of card games in Europe grew throughout the 14th century, all trump cards and the four knights gradually disappeared from the Tarot deck. True, the jester remained, already renamed in our days as the "joker". Full decks are preserved only for divination.
There were several reasons for this. First the desire to separate the world of excitement from the mysteries of the occult and magic. Then, the rules of games with so many cards were too hard to remember. And finally, the fact that before the invention of the printing press, maps were marked and colored by hand, and therefore they were very expensive. Therefore, in order to save money, the deck has "lost weight" to the current 52 cards.
As for the designation of suits, from the original Italian system with its swords an analogue of future spades, maces clubs, goblets worms and coins boo-bay, three later stood out: Swiss with acorns, roses, leaves and armorial shields; German with acorns, leaves, hearts and bells, and French with clubs, spades, hearts and diamonds. The French system of depicting suits turned out to be the most stable, which, after the Thirty Years' War (1618 - 1648), replaced the rest of the symbolism and is now used almost everywhere.
Over the next 300 years, more than one artist tried to introduce new card symbols into use. From time to time, decks appeared in which the four suits appeared in the form of animals, plants, birds, fish, household items, dishes. At the very beginning of this process in Germany, the suits were depicted in the form of caskets for church donations, a comb, bellows and a crown. Allegorical figures of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and Health appeared in France. Later, adherents of socialism even tried to issue cards with images of presidents, commissars, industrialists and workers. However, all these "inventions" turned out to be too artificial and therefore never took root. But with picture cards, things turned out differently.
Today, few players are interested in the biographies of long-disappeared characters of card figures, and the drawings on picture cards in modern decks bear little resemblance to real-life personalities. It is nothing but a stylization of stylizations, infinitely far removed from the original originals. Meanwhile, initially, for example, the four kings symbolized the legendary heroes-rulers of antiquity, whom Europeans could admire in the Middle Ages: Charlemagne, king of the Franks, led the red suit, the shepherd and singer David of spades, because thanks to his exploits he became the legendary Hebrew king; Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great were given the suits of diamonds and clubs respectively.
True, in some decks, the red king was alternately depicted either in the form of a hairy Esau, then Constantine, then Charles I, then Victor Hugo, then the French general Boulanger. And yet in the dispute for possession of the crown, Charlemagne won a bloodless victory. Modern cards lovingly, almost unchanged, store the heroic features of this illustrious husband in the form of a wise old man, wrapped in an ermine mantle, a symbol of wealth. In his left hand he has a sword, a symbol of courage and power.
The image of David was originally decorated with a harp as a reminder of the musical talent of the legendary king of Judah. During the Napoleonic Wars, the King of Spades was briefly portrayed as Napoleon Bonaparte in France and the Duke of Wellington in Prussia. But then justice prevailed and David again took his rightful place among the card royalty.
Although Julius Caesar was never a king, he also entered the crowned Areopagus. He was usually drawn in profile, and on some old French and Italian maps Caesar was depicted with his arm outstretched, as if he was about to grab something. This was supposed to indicate that the diamond suit was traditionally identified with money and wealth.
Alexander the Great is the only one of the card kings, in whose hand the orb, the symbol of the monarchy, was invested. True, on modern maps it is often replaced by a sword as evidence of his military leadership talents. Unfortunately, the appearance of the king of clubs fell victim to a ruthless fashion and from a courageous hero with a fierce look, he turned into a pampered courtier with a dandy beard and elegant mustache.
The first lady of worms was Helena of Troy. In addition to her, Elissa, the founder of Carthage, in Roman mythology Dido, Jeanne d "Arc, Elizabeth I of England, Roxana, Rachel and Fausta acted as contenders for this throne. However, the heroine turned out to be a long-liver biblical legend Judith, whose image has wandered from deck to deck for centuries.
As for the lady of spades, it was customary to depict her in the form of the Greek goddess of wisdom and war, Pallas Athena. True, the Teutons and Scandinavians preferred their own mythological characters who personified the war.
In the XIV-XV centuries, artists could not agree on who to choose as the prototype of the lady of the tambourine. The only exception was France, where they became the queen of the Amazons, in Greek mythology Panfiselia. In the 16th century, someone gave the lady of the tambourine the features of Rachel, the heroine of the biblical legend about the life of Jacob. Since, according to legend, she was a greedy woman, her role as the "queen of money" was to the taste of the general public, and she established herself on this throne.
For a long time, none of the mythological or historical heroines claimed to be the lady of clubs. Sometimes the figures of the ruler of Troy, Hecuba or Florimela, personified the feminine charm created by the talent of the English poet Spencer, flashed in the decks. But they failed to establish themselves in this role. In the end, the French came up with the idea to depict the lady of clubs in the form of what they now say is a sex bomb and call her Argina (from the Latin word "regina" "royal"). The idea turned out to be so successful that it took root and became a tradition. Moreover, all the queens, regular favorites and mistresses of the French monarchs, the heroines of evil lampoons and frivolous witticisms, began to bear the name of Argin.
Initially, four nameless knights acted as jacks. Although the name of this card is more likely to be translated as “servant, lackey”, and among the players this figure has traditionally been identified with an adventurer who does not always respect the law, but is alien to low deceit. Such an interpretation of the word "jack" perfectly matches the image of the jack of hearts. Trying to find a worthy image for him, the French chose the famous historical character Etienne de Vignel, who served in the troops of Charles VII. He was a valiant warrior, brave, generous, ruthless and caustic. For some time he was an adviser to Joan of Arc and was preserved in the memory of posterity as a hero of folklore, like Til Ulenspiegel, William Tell and Robin Hood. Perhaps that is why, without any objections from other nations, Etienne de Vignel firmly took the place of the jack of hearts.
The prototype of the jack of spades was Ogier of Denmark. According to historical chronicles in numerous battles, his weapons were two blades of Toledo steel, which were usually drawn on this map. In numerous legends, this hero performed numerous feats: he defeated the giants, returned their possessions to the bewitched princes, and he himself enjoyed the patronage of the fairy Morgana, the sister of the fairy-tale king Arthur, who, having become engaged to Gier, gave him eternal youth.
The first jack of diamonds was Roland, the legendary nephew of Charlemagne. However, later, for no apparent reason, he was replaced by Hector de Marais, one of the Knights of the Round Table and half-brother of Sir Lancelot. At least, it is this hero that is today associated with the jack of diamonds, although the famous nobility of the knight de Marais does not fit well with the notoriety attributed to this jack.
With the jack of clubs, the masters chose Sir Lancelot himself, the eldest of the Knights of the Round Table. Initially, it was the brightest of the jacks. But gradually the manner of drawing changed, and the jack of clubs lost its luxurious camisole, although in his hands he still had a bow, a symbol of his unsurpassed skill as an archer. However, in the modern jack of clubs it is difficult to recognize that mighty warrior who, being wounded in the thigh by an arrow, nevertheless managed to defeat thirty knights ...
Such is the gallery of family portraits, which none of the players suspect when picking up a satin deck.
When historians became interested in the question of who invented playing cards, the invention was attributed to the artist Jacqueline Grangonner. It was believed that in the 14th century, a Frenchman drew pictures on pieces of cardboard to entertain Charles VI, who suffered from mood swings.
However, it turned out that the cards are much "younger". They are mentioned in earlier documents where they are talking about the ban on card games for clerics. In fact, analogues of modern maps appeared in East Asia.
ancient maps
The prototype of maps, oblong sheets, is mentioned in the sources of the Tang Dynasty, this is 618-917. Even before that, similar rectangular tablets were made from other materials: bone, wood, bamboo. In India, cards called ganjifa were round shape. The Japanese played uta-garuta, where instead of a deck they used mussel shells with various patterns.
Playing cards, as close as possible to modern ones, were already used in Korea and the Celestial Empire in the 12th century. It is believed that from there they came to India, then Persia, Egypt, and only then to Europe.
For a long time, proud Europeans denied the merit of Muslims in the invention of maps. But the Arabs had their own deck, something like Tarot cards. It consisted of 22 trump cards of four suits and 56 minor arcana. The Koran forbade drawing people, so only ornaments, the so-called arabesques, were applied. The suits were cups, swords, staves and pentacles in the form of coins.
Maps in Europe
Arab sailors and merchants brought maps to Europe. They are mentioned in ancient chronicles starting from 1367. As a rule, all entries about the cards refer to the ban. But since the 16th century, the aristocracy, without embarrassment, welcomes their image in their portraits.
It was Grangonner who managed to improve the pictures by depicting figures on the maps that have practically not changed to this day.
Each card with the image of a person has a historical prototype. The king of spades is the biblical David, the king of diamonds is Julius Caesar, the king of clubs is Alexander the Great. But in the time of Grangonner they were correlated with someone else from his contemporaries. For example, the queen of spades is Athena (aka Joan of Arc), the queen of diamonds is Rachel (in France she was painted from the beautiful Agnes Sorel), the queen of hearts is Helen of Troy (Isabella of Bavaria), the club of clubs is Argina (wife of Charles VII Maria). Four brave royal knights became jacks, i.e. squires.
Inanimate virtues were endowed with military metaphorical meanings. Worms were made a symbol of courage, diamonds with spades symbolized weapons, clubs - food supplies. The most valuable card, the ace, has become the epitome of money.
In Russia, cards came into use around 1600. There is a version that the Ukrainian Cossacks played them much earlier, having borrowed from the Germans. Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich showed strictness, for card games they were punished with torture with a red-hot iron and tearing out the nostrils. But already under Peter, two small factories for the production of cards opened in Moscow, and merchants had the opportunity to make good money.
Back then, cards were made from poor quality paper. To somehow increase the strength, it was rubbed with talcum powder. When shuffling, such sheets slid, since then the name “satin” has taken root.
Satin maps were well known in the USSR. Fortunately, progress does not stand still and today there are more durable options, plastic-coated or 100% plastic.
It would seem that what could be simpler and more familiar than playing cards? I went to any Soyuzpechat kiosk and bought a deck. Usually it won't be a very good deck. good quality, but with Charlemagne's drawings (made back in the 19th century!) - satin maps (in the figure below).
Of course, there are still people who prefer to use the more expensive decks of world brands designed for poker or bridge. But in any case, a deck of cards is a fairly common item in modern everyday life.
At the same time, a number of myths and simply outright nonsense are associated with playing cards. For example, the myth that the cards are the "devil's bible", or that they are descended from the mysterious tarot cards, or that they were invented by gypsies to deceive the common people, or by Jews to lure Christians into the temptation of gambling.
And here you can also recall the attempts of various occultists to put four elements in line with the four suits or link them. But in a little more detail, I would like to dwell on the myth, according to which the suits are declared symbols of the instruments of Christ's death on the cross:
- clubs are, of course, the cross itself. Here, by the way, they again slander the Jews, in whose language “clubs” means “impurity”, i.e. something like: "The accursed Jews call our Cross unclean!".
- peaks - naturally, the spear with which the centurion Longinus pierced the heart of the Savior.
- diamonds are the nails with which Jesus was nailed to the cross.
- hearts - a sponge soaked in vinegar, which was given to Christ.
And so, this short article is designed to dispel these myths and show the reader the main milestones in the history of playing cards.
So, who invented playing cards?
Chinese. Like a lot of other things.
The Chinese were the first to invent paper, so it was in China that the ability to make gambling devices out of paper appeared.
Historically, there are several types of playing cards in China. On some Chinese playing cards, Chinese chess figures xiangqi (or rather, hieroglyphs) are depicted, on others - dominoes, on others - coins. Last type and is called "coin cards".
And now attention! It is from the "coin cards" that European playing cards originated.
So let's look at Chinese coin cards in detail.
A deck of Chinese coin cards looks unusual for you and me. In such a deck, there are three (or four) suits, each of which has nine (as an option - ten) cards:
1. Coins. Nine cards: from one coin to nine coins.
2. Bundles of coins. And in each bunch - one hundred coins. Nine cards: from one bundle (100 coins) to nine bundles (900 coins).
What about bundles of coins?
The fact is that in China the coins were full of holes (see the figure below):
And the coins were transferred by stringing them on ropes. In our time - uncomfortable, but then - quite a nothing. It looked something like this:
3. Tens of thousands of coins. Such quantities of coins are no longer depicted by drawings, but by hieroglyphs. And again nine cards: from 10,000 coins to 90,000 coins.
So, in Chinese coin cards, the suits are in a hierarchical relationship, and each next suit is obtained by multiplying the previous suit by 100:
- 1 -> 100 -> 10000
- 2 -> 200 -> 20000
- 9 -> 900 -> 90000
| coins | Bundles of coins | Tens of thousands (characters) |
| 1 | 100 | 10000 |
| 2 | 200 | 20000 |
| 3 | 300 | 30000 |
| 4 | 400 | 40000 |
| 5 | 500 | 50000 |
| 6 | 600 | 60000 |
| 7 | 700 | 70000 |
| 8 | 800 | 80000 |
| 9 | 900 | 90000 |
Now let's see how Chinese coin cards look like. The figure below shows part of a deck of Chinese coin cards of one of the types (there are a lot of these types, and even I don’t understand them).
From top to bottom: coins, bundles of coins, tens of thousands of coins.
As you can see, the bundles of coins here look more like some kind of worms, and funny little men are depicted on the cards of the “ten thousand” suit (they do not indicate the value of the card, but the hieroglyphs on top).
Usually, the denomination and suit of Chinese coin cards are even more stylized, and only a player or specialist can understand what is shown on the card.
Here is the most difficult drawing:
I'll give you a hint: coins are in the middle, tens of thousands on top, bunches of coins on the bottom.
In addition to the above picture, you can see the suits of Chinese coin cards in a game like mahjong. In this game, which looks more like dominoes, but in fact - like a rummy card game, there are also three suits:
- dots (these are coins);
- bamboos (bundles of hundred coins);
- symbols (tens of thousands of coins).
From top to bottom: dots, bamboos, symbols.
By the way, a feature of coin cards is that each suit in the deck is not one, as in the usual playing cards, but several.
Moreover, in mahjong the situation is the same: there are four sets of bones of each suit. Here is a complete set of mahjong "dots" to illustrate:
In general, in the case of mahjong, we see a kind of reverse movement of the pendulum: earlier, dominoes were depicted on cards, and now cards are depicted on dominoes ...
It is also interesting to note that in Europe they can also play not one, but several decks at once, for example, when playing the same rummy or playing solitaire.
Now about the symbolism of the suits and their origin. In the ancient European deck there were four suits: coins, sticks, cups and swords. I note that these suits are preserved today in Italy and Spain. Here are the suits (using the triples as an example):
And, as the attentive reader may have noticed, the suit of the “coin” clearly comes from China. And indeed it is.
The suit of the "stick" ("batons") - also from China - is, so to speak, a European arrangement of the Chinese suit of the "bundle of coins".
But where did the "swords" and "cups" come from?
The fact is that playing cards did not come to Europe directly from China.
Europeans adopted maps not from the Chinese, but from the Arabs. Most likely, the so-called mamluk playing cards, then common in Egypt (it was the Mamluks who ruled there at that time). It happened in the XIV century. In Europe, playing cards were even originally called Arabic words - naibi, neip.
Mamluk playing cards already had four suits: coins, polo sticks, bowls and scimitars.
Perhaps the bowls are just an Arabic interpretation of the Chinese suit "tens of thousands". But maybe not. "Swords" (scimitars), apparently, were invented by the Arabs.
It was the Arabs who introduced the so-called court cards into the deck - the familiar King, Queen and Jack. The Arabs had these, respectively: Sultan, First Vizier, Second Vizier. In a number of decks there was also a fourth court card - a kind of "assistant".
Of course, you can build all sorts of hypotheses about why the Arabs needed new suits and court cards, about why they decided to remake Chinese coin cards. You can even drag here any mysticism such as Sufi orders or some Kabbalists who secretly lived among the Arabs. But, in my opinion, here we are simply talking about the fact that the need for just such a deck was due to the rules of the card game that developed in Arab culture.
What did the Mamluk playing cards look like? Here are schematic images of the court cards of the Mamluk deck:
From top to bottom: coins, polo sticks, bowls, scimitars. From left to right: sultan, vizier, second vizier.
In reality, the Mamluk maps looked like this:
The figure above shows three court cards of the polo stick suit. From left to right: sultan, vizier, second vizier.
So, in the XIV century, Mamluk maps came to Europe, which were changed in accordance with European culture. As the Arabs once remade Chinese playing cards for themselves, so the Europeans adapted the Arabic cards to their own needs.
At the same time, the suits practically did not change (except that scimitars became swords, and polo sticks became just sticks), but they began to draw cards in a European way (in Europe there was no ban on the image of living beings, unlike the Muslim East). The court cards have accordingly changed to King, Knight and Page (Squire), plus/minus Queen.
And in the XV century in Europe (namely, in Italy) tarot cards appeared. They evolved from regular playing cards by adding trump cards (usually 21 trump cards) and a special card called "Fool".
So non-playing cards evolved from tarot cards by simplification, and tarot cards evolved from ordinary playing cards by complication.
Moreover, tarot cards were created specifically for the game, and not at all for divination or the transmission of some kind of occult wisdom. They played a game called "Triumphs" with the help of tarot cards. These cards themselves were originally called triumphs (the word "tarot" appeared much later).
By the way, here is an interesting point showing that similar elements in different cultures can develop in a similar way: in addition to the score cards in the tarot, there are also trump cards. On these trumps we see various allegorical images, including virtues.
Here are three virtues from the so-called "Marseilles" tarot (other types of tarot decks may have different sets of virtues):
And in mahjong, in addition to the “pointed knuckles” (dots, bamboos and symbols), there are knuckles with allegories of virtues:
- red dragon - moderation;
- green dragon - prosperity;
- white dragon - benevolence, sincerity and filial piety.
And here is a more traditional image of them (hieroglyphic):
How did the familiar symbols of suits appear - diamonds, clubs, hearts and spades? Such suits, by the way, are usually called French.
In general, it is not difficult to guess that the French suits are nothing more than a simplification and stylization of the original suits (Italian-Spanish, in Italy and Spain, I remind you that they are still used). Thus:
- coins turned into tambourines;
- sticks - in clubs;
- bowls - into hearts;
- swords - in spades.
- coins - bells - tambourines;
- sticks - acorns - clubs;
- bowls - hearts - hearts;
- swords - leaves - spades.
Obviously, the conclusion about the origin of the French suits from the German ones is quite logical, given that the German suits are simpler than the Italian-Spanish ones, but are still full-fledged drawings, and not simplified signs.
So let's recap:
- Playing cards were invented in China.
- The Arabs adopted them from the Chinese. Arabs have Europeans.
- The symbols of suits (Italo-Spanish, German, French) have nothing to do with either the occult or any devilry.
- Tarot cards are a special form of playing cards that are based on regular playing cards.
A rare modern man did not hold playing cards in his hands.
There are several versions of their appearance, and researchers have not yet come to a consensus on this matter.
The cards have an ancient and very dramatic history. It has long been believed that the cards were invented in France for the entertainment of the mentally ill King Charles VI the Mad, but this is just a legend. After all, already in ancient Egypt they played with cuttings with numbers marked on them, in India - with ivory plates or shells; in China, maps similar to modern ones have been known since the 12th century.
There are several versions of the origin of the cards:
The first is Chinese, although many still do not want to believe in it.
Chinese and Japanese cards are too unusual for us both in appearance and in the nature of the game, which is more like dominoes.
However, there is no doubt that already in the 8th century in China, sticks were used for games, and then strips of paper with symbols for various symbols.
These distant ancestors of cards were also used instead of money, so they had three suits: a coin, two coins and many coins.
And in India, playing cards depicted the figure of the four-armed Shiva, who held a goblet, a sword, a coin and a wand.
Some believe that these symbols of the four Indian estates gave rise to modern card suits.
But much more popular is the Egyptian version of the origin of the cards, replicated by the latest occultists.
They claimed that in ancient times the Egyptian priests wrote down all the wisdom of the world on 78 golden tablets, which were also depicted in the symbolic form of cards. 56 of them - "Minor Arcana" - became ordinary playing cards, and the remaining 22 "Senior Arcana" became part of the mysterious Tarot deck used for divination.
This version was first published in 1785 by the French occultist Etteila, and his successors the French Eliphas Levy and Dr. Papus and the English Mathers and Crowley created their own systems for interpreting Tarot cards.
This name allegedly comes from the Egyptian "ta rosh" ("the way of the kings"), and the cards themselves were brought to Europe either by Arabs or by gypsies, who were often considered to come from Egypt.
True, scientists have not been able to find any evidence of such an early existence of the Tarot deck.
According to the third version (European version), ordinary maps appeared on the European continent no later than the 14th century.
Back in 1367, the card game was banned in the city of Bern, and ten years later, a shocked papal envoy watched with horror as the monks enthusiastically cut into cards near the walls of their monastery.
In 1392, Jacquemain Gringonner, the jester of the mentally ill French King Charles VI, drew a deck of cards for the amusement of his master.
The then deck differed from the current one in one detail: it had only 32 cards.
There were not enough four ladies, whose presence seemed then superfluous.
Only in the next century, Italian artists began to depict Madonnas not only in paintings, but also on maps.
There is an assumption that the deck is not a random collection of cards.
52 cards are the number of weeks in a year, four suits are the four seasons.
The green suit is a symbol of energy and vitality, spring, west, water.
In medieval cards, the sign of the suit was depicted with the help of a wand, a staff, a stick with green leaves, which, when printed, were simplified to black peaks.
The red suit symbolized beauty, the north, spirituality. Cups, bowls, hearts, books were depicted on the card of this suit.
The yellow suit is a symbol of intelligence, fire, south, business success.
The playing card depicted a coin, a rhombus, a lit torch, the sun, fire, a golden bell. The blue suit is a symbol of simplicity, decency. The sign of this suit was an acorn, crossed swords, swords. The cards at that time were 22 centimeters long, which made them extremely inconvenient to play.
There was no uniformity in card suits.
In early Italian decks, they were called "swords", "cups", "denarii" (coins) and "wands".
It seems, as in India, it was associated with the estates: the nobility, the clergy and the merchant class, while the wand symbolized the royal power standing above them.
In the French version, swords became spades, cups became hearts, denarii became diamonds, and wands became crosses or clubs (the latter word in French means cloverleaf). On different languages these names still sound differently; for example, in England and Germany these are "shovels", "hearts", "diamonds" and "clubs", and in Italy - "spears", "hearts", "squares" and "flowers".
On German cards, you can still find the old names of suits: "acorns", "hearts", "bells" and "leaves".
As for the Russian word "worms", it comes from the word "red" ("red"): it is clear that "hearts" originally referred to the red suit.
The early card games were quite complex, because in addition to the 56 standard cards, they used 22 "Major Arcana" plus 20 more trump cards, named after the signs of the Zodiac and the elements.
IN different countries these cards were called differently and the rules were so confused that it became simply impossible to play.
In addition, the cards were painted by hand and were so expensive that only the rich could buy them. In the 16th century, the cards were radically simplified - almost all the pictures disappeared from them, with the exception of the four "highest suits" and the jester (joker).
Interestingly, all card images had real or legendary prototypes. For example, the four kings are the greatest monarchs of antiquity: Charlemagne (hearts), the biblical king David (spades), Julius Caesar (diamonds) and Alexander the Great (clubs).
With regard to the ladies, there was no such unanimity - for example, the lady of worms was either Judith, then Helen of Troy, then Dido.
The Queen of Spades has traditionally been portrayed as the goddess of war - Athena, Minerva and even Joan of Arc.
In the role of the Queen of Spades, after long disputes, they began to portray the biblical Rachel: she was ideally suited for the role of the "queen of money", since she robbed her own father.
Finally, the lady of clubs, on early Italian cards acting as the virtuous Lucretia, turned into Argina, an allegory of vanity and vanity.
By the 13th century, cards were already known and popular throughout Europe.
From this point on, the history of the development of cards becomes clearer, but rather monotonous. In the Middle Ages, both fortune-telling and gambling were considered sinful.
In addition, cards have become the most popular game during the working day - a terrible sin, according to employers of all times and peoples.
Therefore, from the middle of the XIII century, the history of the development of maps turns into a history of prohibitions associated with them.
For example, in France in the 17th century, householders in whose apartments gambling card games were played were fined, disenfranchised, and expelled from the city.
Card debts were not recognized by law, and parents could recover a large amount from a person who won money from their child.
After the French Revolution, indirect taxes on the game were abolished, which stimulated its development.
The "pictures" themselves have also changed - since the kings were in disgrace, it was customary to draw geniuses instead, ladies now symbolized virtues - in other words, a new social structure came to card symbolism.
True, already in 1813 jacks, queens and kings returned to the cards.
The indirect tax on playing cards was only abolished in France in 1945.
Maps appeared in Russia at the beginning of the 17th century.
By the middle of this century, they had already gained popularity as a “path” to crimes and inciting passions. In the “Regulations” of 1649, under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, it was ordered to act with the players “as it is written about taty”, that is, beat them with a whip and deprive them of fingers and hands by chopping off.
A decree of 1696 under Peter I ordered to search all those suspected of wanting to play cards, "... and whoever had the cards taken out, beat with a whip." These punitive sanctions and similar subsequent ones were due to the costs associated with the spread of gambling card games.
Along with them, there were so-called commercial card games, as well as the use of cards to show tricks and play solitaire.
The development of "innocent" forms of using cards was facilitated by the decree of Elizabeth Petrovna of 1761 on the division of the use of cards into those prohibited for gambling and permitted for commercial games.
It is not entirely clear how the maps penetrated into Russia.
Most likely, they became widespread in connection with the Polish-Swedish intervention during the Time of Troubles at the beginning of the 18th century.
In the 19th century the development of new drawings of playing cards began.
Academicians of painting Adolf Iosifovich Charleman and Alexander Egorovich Beideman were engaged in it.
It is worth noting that at present their sketches are kept in the State Russian Museum and in the Peterhof Card Museum.
However, the drawings of Academician Adolf Iosifovich Charleman, which we now know as Atlas Maps, were put into production.
AI Charleman did not create a fundamentally new card style.
The drawings on the Atlas cards had as their fundamental principle the so-called "North German picture", which also came from a completely ancient folk French card deck.
New map thumbnails created did not have own name.
The concept of "satin" in the middle of the 19th century referred to the technology of their manufacture.
Satin is a special kind of smooth, glossy, lustrous silk fabric.
The paper on which they were printed was previously rubbed with talc on special wheeled machines.
In 1855, a dozen decks of satin cards cost 5 rubles 40 kopecks.
WITH late XVIII century, a real card boom began, engulfing the entire Russian culture.
For example, in his youth Derzhavin lived mainly on money won in cards, and Pushkin was listed in police reports not as a poet, but as "a well-known banker in Moscow."
Gambling Nekrasov and Dostoevsky often lost their last pennies, while the cautious Turgenev preferred to play for fun.
In the then secular society, especially provincial, almost the only entertainment was cards and the scandals associated with them.
Gradually, card games were divided into commercial, based on a clear mathematical calculation, and gambling, where chance ruled everything.
If the first (screw, whist, preference, bridge, poker) established themselves among educated people, then the second (seka, "point", shtoss and hundreds of others, up to the harmless "thrown fool") reigned supreme among the common people.
In the West, "mental" card games that train logical thinking have even been included in the school curriculum.
However, the cards began to serve for very non-intellectual activities.
If they show naked girls, it's not up to the bridge.
But this is a completely different game.
It must be said that over the centuries there have appeared many who wished to modernize card images, replacing them with animals, birds, and household items.
For political purposes, decks were produced, where Napoleon or the German emperor Wilhelm acted as kings.
And in the USSR, during the NEP years, there were attempts to depict workers with peasants on the cards and even introduce new suits - "sickles", "hammers" and "stars".
True, such amateur activity was quickly suppressed, and the cards were stopped for a long time to be printed as "attributes of bourgeois decay."