The Game of Chess

of the city of Babylon, he had intended to kill [the wise men] when they could not interpret the dream he had dreamed, as Lord Daniel the prophet writes. In those same times, when that same King Evilmerodach reigned, the game of chess schachzabelFrom the Latin scaccarium. In the Middle Ages, chess was often used as an allegory for social order and morality. was invented. Some say—though it is not true—that it was invented before the fall of Troy; however, the game came out of Chaldea An ancient region in Mesopotamia. to the Greeks, and there it first became common. Afterwards, in the time of Alexander the Great, it came into the land of Egypt, and after that into the land of Judea, as a Greek master named Diomedus tells us.

This game was invented by a master named Xerxes in Chaldea, who was such an enlightened master that the masters in Greece largely modeled themselves after him. This master was so clothed in justice that he preferred to die in righteousness rather than sit in royal sinfulness, or live according to his own will in a harmful way and follow his heart's desire in a sinful acceptance of the king's harmful cruelty original: "fraishait," meaning terrifying cruelty or danger.. And because the King’s cruel life was despicable and evil in its deeds—for he had unjustly and treacherously killed many of his wise men who had corrected him for his misdeeds—now the common people said to him, "It is fitting..."