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Isle of Lewis Chess Men. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Joe Joyce wrote on Sun, Jun 3, 2007 02:03 AM UTC:
rossco, John is certainly right about the bishop. But notice he said nothing about the rook. I've always felt the piece labelled 'rook' is actually a pawn, or, at the very least, should be. It is a footsoldier with a shield, smaller than all the other pieces. It has none of the features of what we associate with the modern rook, that is, a castle or tower; nor does it have any of the features of the original 'rukh', a chariot. It has all the features we associate with pawns. They will tell us that the large shield the footsoldier holds represents a curtain wall or other fixed defense, thus by analogy is a tower or castle. But if I were to create a chess set from my set of the Lewis pieces, I'd make a new, tower piece for the rook, and use that footsoldier piece as the pawn, personally. What they call a pawn in the illustration looks to me like a piece from a smaller, cruder set, and not at all like it belongs with the first 5 pieces.