Who drew playing cards? Where did playing cards come from?

Hello everybody.

Today I will tell you one of the many versions about how playing cards appeared in Russia. Many versions are a reflection of the eras in which the cards were born. And this version is one of the most interesting.

Modern playing cards are a multi-stage development of history, with its ups and downs, the development of a history that is constantly evolving, and they are looking for new ways of perfection.

This fact alone is worth being proud of.
One of the mysteries remains that no one still knows the exact date, year of origin of playing cards, and the place of their invention remains a mystery to this day.

Birthplace of cards

Of course, you have probably read many theories about this or that place and date of birth. One ancient Chinese dictionary by Ching Tsze Tung (this dictionary became popular in 1678 in Europe) says that playing cards were invented in 1120 in China, but in 1132 they became widespread in China.

But let's look today at several options for the appearance of cards, in addition to the Chinese version, we will also consider the Indian version and the Egyptian version.
With all the interest in cards, the Japanese and Chinese decks are unusual for us, which sometimes surprises and misleads our minds.

The appearance, the nature of the game, which is similar to dominoes - all this arouses interest. However, there is information that in China in the 8th century, sticks were used for games, and then strips of paper with various symbols.

These distant ancestors of cards were also used as or instead of money, which is why there were only three suits: a coin, two coins and many coins.

After some time, the Japanese acquired a fourth suit, and the meaning of the suits also changed; now these suits symbolized the seasons, and the number of cards (52 pieces) in the deck meant the number of weeks in the year.

There is also another theory about the origin of playing cards. Before the appearance of paper cards, which we are all familiar with, the Japanese played with special tablets that resembled cards carved from ivory or wood with cut-out figures.

And in Medieval Japan, the founders of playing cards were mussel shells; such cards were one of the most amazing.

Using shell playing cards, they played solitaire on the table, and searched for shells with the same designs in the laid out shells. At this rate, maps became famous both in India and Egypt in the 13th century.

One of the most interesting points was that in India, the pictures of playing cards depicted a four-armed Shiva, who had a cup, a sword, a coin and a staff in his hands.

After such images of the four-armed Shiva in India, it became believed that these objects in the hands of Shiva denoted classes and this served as the beginning of modern card suits.
But one of the most popular versions of the origin of playing cards is Egyptian. This version is promoted by modern occultists.

They claim that in ancient times, the priests of Egypt wrote down all the wisdom and mysteries of the world on 78 tablets of gold, and these tablets were depicted in the form of symbols of playing cards.

The tablets were divided into parts: 1. “Minor Arcana” - 56 pieces (later they became ordinary playing cards); 2. “Major Arcana” - 22 pieces, were considered mysterious cards of the Tarot deck, and were used exclusively for fortune telling.
This version was launched to the masses in 1785 by the French occultist Etteil, and numerous of his successors not only supported and continued, but also created their own system for interpreting Tarot cards.

The name Tarot supposedly originates from the Egyptian word “ta rosh”, which means “the path of the king”, and they were brought to Europe, again allegedly, by either Arabs or gypsies, who, by the way, were often previously considered to have come from Egypt, and maybe today they think so.
The only thing I can tell you is that not a single evidence of such an early appearance of Tarot cards has been found, not a single scientist has been able to prove it.

The appearance of maps in Europe

There are several versions about the appearance of maps in Europe. One version is that the appearance of maps is associated with the appearance of gypsies in Europe in the 15th century.

And another version reveals to us an interesting fact, that a little-known painter invented cards for the entertainment of the insane King of France Charles VI (1368-1422), and in history he is known to everyone as Charles the Mad. Allegedly, with the advent of such entertainment for the king, he calmed down and his despotic crazy character was distracted.

The opinion that the invention of cards for Charles VI the Mad as entertainment and joy is just another legend. The game on handles with images of numbers on them was played in Ancient Greece already in those days, and in India - these were shells or ivory plates; and in China, playing cards are similar to our modern cards, known since the 12th century.
In 1379, the first documentary evidence of the appearance of cards was published. In the chronicle of one of the cities in Italy, a note appeared: “A card game has been introduced, which came from the country of the Saracens and is called by them “naib.”
Based on the name of this game “naib”, one can assume that this game was invented by the military, or had a military character, because "naib" means "captain", "chief".

Arabic cards

Arabic cards had one feature that distinguished them from other playing cards: only numbers were depicted on these cards, the depiction of human figures was prohibited, this was the law of Mohammed. Therefore, the French rather did not invent maps, and only transformed existing ones with all kinds of drawings.

The suits of card decks have always been varied. In some of the earliest Italian decks, the suits, for example, bore the names: “swords”, “cups”, “wands”, “denarii” (coins).

It was very similar to the Indian theme: clergy, nobility and merchant class, and the rod itself symbolized the royal power that stood before us all.
But the French came up with their own version of the suits and instead of swords they had “spades”, cups became “hearts”, denarii turned into “diamonds”, and the wands were called “crosses” or “clubs” “clubs” means “clover leaf” in French ).

Variety of titles

These names, in different languages, now sound differently, for example: England and Germany are “shovels”, “diamonds”, “hearts” and “bludgeons”, Italy are “spears”, “hearts”, “flowers” ​​and "bells" and "leaves". And in Russia the word “worms” comes from the word “chervonny”, i.e. red, now it’s clear why hearts originally belonged to the red suits.

Cards, cards, cards.. Oh that word, many people’s eyes lit up at this word, excitement took over, and the mind could no longer cope. Cards quickly spread throughout many European countries.

The government, observing all this, tried to tame the excitement in people by taking measures and banning card games, but... all attempts turn out to be insignificant. Along with the taming of gambling, more and more new gambling card games appeared.

In Germany, craft workshops began to appear that were engaged in the production of cards, and manufacturing methods also improved.
In France in the 15th century, card suits were established that still exist today. It is believed that the suit of each card speaks about the four most important objects of knightly use: clubs - a sword, hearts - a shield, spades - spears, diamonds - a banner and coat of arms.

What is encrypted in the cards?

There is a mystical connection in cards with something unearthly and at the same time familiar to all of us, for example, 52 cards are the number of weeks in a year; 4 suits – correspond to the seasons; there are 13 cards in each suit, the same number of weeks in each season; if you add up all the card values, the total will be 364 - the same as the number of days in a year without one. The amazing is nearby.
The first card games were very intricate, because the game involved not only 56 standard cards, but also 22 “Major Arcana” cards, and another 20 cards that were trump cards named after the elements and signs of the Zodiac.

From country to country, the names of these cards were confused and so confused that it became simply impossible to play. And the uniqueness of these cards was that they were hand-painted and the price for them was quite high, and that is why only rich people could purchase them.

Radical changes occurred in the 16th century, when almost all the pictures disappeared, leaving only the four “high suits” and the joker “joker”. An interesting fact is that all the images on the cards were either real or legendary heroes.

We continue to investigate how playing cards appeared.

Who played the role of kings?

For example, four kings, the most amazing people of antiquity: Carth the Great (hearts), Julius Caesar (diamonds), the biblical king David (spades), Alexander the Great (clubs). There was no unanimity regarding the queens on the cards - the queen of hearts was either Judith, Dido, or Helen of Troy.

The Queen of Spades personified the goddess of war - Athena, Minerva, Joan of Arc. In the role of the femme fatale, the queen of spades, after many disagreements, they began to portray the biblical Rachel; she, like no one else, was better suited for the role of “queen of money”, because she robbed her own father.

The Queen of Clubs acted as the virtuous Lucretia, gradually turning into Argina - symbolizing vanity and vanity.
One of the most difficult card figures is the jack, which in English means squire.

At first, the word “jack” meant servants and even jesters, but then it established itself in a different meaning. The French knight La Hire, whose nickname was Satan (hearts), the heroes of the epic Ogier the Dane (spade), Roland (tambourine) and Lancelot the Lake (clubs).

The first maps were very expensive due to the fact that they were drawn by hand; machines for their production did not yet exist. The length of the cards at that time was 22 cm, this was a very inconvenient size, but it was convenient for card drawers.

Atlas maps

In our life, where we are accustomed to everything that is familiar to us from childhood, it seems ordinary. Here are the atlas maps, they are familiar and familiar to us; looking at other maps, they may seem somehow ridiculous to us.

For decades, atlas maps have been distributed all over the world and that is why they have earned our trust.

They are so familiar to us, like fairy tales, like myths and epics. But maps appeared in Russia only in the middle of the 19th century.

Some of the highest specialists, Academician Adolf Iosifovich Charlemagne (Bode-Charlemagne) and Alexander Egorovich Beideman, dealt with issues of artistic design.

These people made an era with their talent, your skill, after an era, the card images designed by these people are the standard and wonderful card graphics. At this time, these masterpieces adorn the collection of the State Russian Museum and the Peterhof Card Museum. We continue to investigate how playing cards appeared.

Modernity

Over time, card games were divided into two components: commercial (purely mathematical calculations) and gambling (chance). The first option (vint, whist, preference, bridge, poker) took root among educated people who loved to play, while the second direction (sec, “point”, shtoss and hundreds of others, right down to the harmless “throwing fool”) reigned among the common people.

The West progressed towards cards, logic and thinking games being included in children's school curriculum. However, what to judge and reason, play, think, win. My story about how playing cards appeared is over.

I advise you to learn:

Good luck with your story, be lucky.

As always, you just have to delve deeper into a topic, and so many new and interesting things will immediately appear! It would seem that playing cards - what's wrong with that?

History of cards

Those maps that we are accustomed to since childhood came to us at the beginning of the 17th century through Poland and Germany from France. The “Russian deck” of 36 cards is a stripped-down (i.e. starting with sixes) 54-card “French deck”.

Around the 15th-16th centuries, the French deck was completely formed in its familiar form and has remained virtually unchanged since then. Recent changes are the appearance in 1830 of a design symmetrical relative to the top and bottom (previously, card figures were drawn in full height), the appearance of rounded corners, the appearance of small index drawings in the corners of the card (in 1864 they were patented in America by a certain Saladi).

1658, Guinea, France. A modern reprint of the deck with added indexes and rounded card corners

Cards came to France in the mid-15th century from Italy, which had its own card deck with suits that were unusual for us (see below for information on suits), slightly different from region to region (62 cards from Bologna, 78 in Venice, 98 in Florence) . A special feature of such cards was 21 trump cards - the “Major Arcana”. Apparently this is how Tarot cards appeared, which were played until the 18th century, and only then occultists began to use them).

Italian maps belong to the so-called “Latin” (Spanish, Portuguese) - these are the first European maps, brought to the Apennines at the end of the 14th century by crusaders from the countries of the East.

The first written mention of playing cards in Europe is a decree in 1367 banning card playing in the city of Bern. In 1392, Jacquemin Gringonner, the jester of the mentally ill French King Charles VI, drew a deck of cards to amuse his master. That deck was different from the modern one - it had only 32 cards (there were no queens).

The further history of the cards is lost in the centuries. There are several versions of their origin.

One of them is the adoption of the card game from Persia via India. It is in Persian sources that there is the earliest mention of this game. In the "Annals of Egypt and Syria" there is a mention that the nobles at court played the game "Kanjifah", using cards of 8 suits of 12 cards. But under the influence of Muslims, this game was forgotten already in the middle of the 17th century.

In India, the cards took root; the local deck was called ganjifa. This word is first mentioned in 1527 in the diary of Emperor Babur, where he writes that he sent a deck to his friend.

Indian round playing cards depicted the figure of a four-armed Shiva holding a cup, a sword, a coin and a staff. It is believed that these symbols of the four Indian classes gave rise to the suits of the “Latin deck”.

Ganjifa cards are still produced in the Rajistan region of India.

Another common version is Turkic. In the 12th and 13th centuries, the Egyptian Mamelukes played with a deck of 52 cards with values ​​from 1 to 10, which included four suits (swords, clubs, cups and coins), a "malik" (emir - king) and his two assistants - "naib malik" " and "tani naib". This is very reminiscent of the “Latin deck”, it also initially did not have queens, but there were kings, jacks and gentlemen. Only hockey sticks became ceremonial batons (or clubs) in Europe. And the word “naib”, “helper”, became the name of the card game.

In 1939, L.A. Mayer discovered an incomplete deck of Mamluk cards in the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul.

Mamluk maps. Ten of Cups, Three of Cups, First Advisor of Cups, Second Advisor of Cups.

There is a version that seems to me to be simply an attempt at hoaxing, that the cards came to us from Egypt. It was first published in 1785 by the French occultist Etteilla. Allegedly, Egyptian maps are 78 golden tablets on which the priests wrote down all their knowledge. 56 of them - the "Minor Arcana" - became ordinary playing cards, and with 22 "Major Arcana" they made up a Tarot deck used for fortune telling. But scientists have not found any archaeological evidence for this version.

Another version, which also does not inspire confidence in me personally, is that the card game appeared in the 12th century in China. But although they drew paper pictures with various images of flowers and birds, somewhat reminiscent of cards, the rules of the game were more like dominoes.

Chinese "money" cards

Drawing cards

The most common design of playing cards in Russia - traditional "Satin cards" - was created in the mid-19th century by academician of painting Adolph Iosifovich Charlemagne. Since then, the design has not changed, except for the fact that the image of the coat of arms of the Russian Empire was removed from the card of the jack of hearts and the ace of diamonds.

But Charlemagne did not create a fundamentally new card style. When developing the drawings, he relied on the tradition of the “North German picture”, which originated from the ancient French folk card deck.

1875 Atlas maps made according to the sketch of A. Charlemagne

The Anglo-American playing card pattern, now common throughout the world, developed from the Rouen (a variation of the French) pattern.

Anglo-American pattern

The "Paris Template" maps were created in the mid-17th century based on maps by the artist Hector de Troyes. Nowadays, the image of the Parisian template is most often found on French-made preference playing cards (a deck of 32 cards).

Paris template cards from 1895

In French cards, unlike ours, where the “pictures” are simply abstract kings and queens, each card is assigned its own prototype:

King of Hearts - Charlemagne
king of spades - King David
King of Diamonds - Julius Caesar
King of Clubs - Alexander the Great
Queen of Hearts - Judith (earlier images - Helen of Troy or Dido, founder of Carthage)
queen of spades - Pallas Athena (in other versions Minerva or Joan of Arc)
Queen of Diamonds - Rachel (Biblical character. Represents greed and love of money)
queen of clubs - Argina (an anagram of the word "queen" - "regina". The mistresses of French kings soon began to be named after Argina). It is interesting that this card most often changed its prototype: it depicted the virtuous Lucretia, a symbol of charm to Philo, Hecuba).
Jack of Hearts - Etienne de Vignolles (nicknamed La Hire - "Fury"). Advisor to Joan of Arc, who became a hero of folklore.
jack of spades - Ogier (Ogier) Dane. Cousin of Charlemagne, national hero of Denmark
jack of diamonds - Hector (but not the Trojan prince, but Hector de Marais, knight of the Round Table and brother of Lancelot)
jack of clubs - Lancelot. Knight of the Round Table.

On these cards from the French "deck on feet" (1648), the images are labeled with their names.

The tradition of magnificently decorating the Ace of Spades comes from the fact that during the reign of King James I of England (1566-1625), a decree was issued according to which information about the manufacturer and its logo had to be printed on the Ace of Spades (since this card is the first in the deck). A special stamp was placed on the same ace, indicating the payment of a special tax on cards.

Card suits

The usual card suits - spades, clubs, diamonds, hearts - also have their own history. They were invented in France and, together with the “French deck”, have now become widespread worldwide, practically displacing the other two main types of playing cards - the “Italian” and “German” decks.

The suits originally symbolized the attributes of a knight - a spear (spades), a sword (clubs), a shield (hearts) and a coat of arms (diamonds).

These suits are the result of the transformation of the ancient suits of the “Italian deck” - “swords”, “cups” (bowls), “pentacles” (coins, denarii, discs) and “wands” (clubs, clubs). It seems, as in India, they symbolized classes: the nobility, clergy, merchants and the royal power standing above them.

In the French version, “swords” turned into “spades”, “cups” into “hearts”, “pentacles” into “diamonds”, and “wands” into “crosses”, or “clubs” (“clubs” in English). French for "clover leaf" or "shamrock").

In different countries, the names of the suits now sound differently.

In France they are literally translated as follows: pikes (spears), trefoils, hearts, tiles (pavement).
In Italy - peaks (spears), flowers, hearts, squares.

In Spain, the original names have been preserved - swords, clubs, bowls (cups), coins.

In Germany and England - shovels, clubs, hearts, diamonds.

In addition, on German maps (southern and eastern regions of Germany) you can still find ancient symbols: acorns, bells, leaves, hearts. They are also used in Austria, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Croatia, Hungary and Romania.

Switzerland also has its own national version of the suits - flowers (roses), bells, shields (coats of arms) and acorns.

In Russia, the name of the card suit “hearts” apparently comes from the French “coeur” - heart, or from the word “hearts”, i.e. "red", also associated with the heart.

Traditional deck. Spain, 1590

Traditional deck. Italy

Traditional deck. Germany

Traditional deck. Switzerland

It is interesting that the jack (from the French valet - servant, footman) is associated with an adventurer, a brave but roguish adventurer.

In some versions of card decks (for example, in the old “Spanish”, “Swiss”, “German” decks) there are no queens, but in addition to the king, there are two more male characters - unter (junior jack) and ober (senior jack).
Card queens first appeared in Italy, from where they were borrowed by the French.

Map of the modern distribution of national decks:

Taken from here:

Versions of card origin

The modern deck of cards is the result of a complex development of this ancient game.

The exact time of origin of the cards is not known, and the place of their invention is also not clear. The ancient Chinese dictionary of Ching Tsze Tung, which became famous in Europe in 1678, says that cards were invented in China in 1120, and in 1132 they became widespread here. But in general, there are several versions of the appearance of cards. In addition to Chinese, we will also consider Indian and Egyptian.

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, first sticks and then strips of paper with the designations of various symbols were used for games. These distant ancestors of cards were also used instead of money, so they had three suits: a coin, two coins and many coins. Then the Japanese had four suits of cards: they symbolized the seasons, and the 52 cards in the deck meant the number of weeks in the year.

There is also evidence that the Chinese and Japanese, even before the appearance of playing cards made of paper, already played with tablets, like cards, made of ivory or wood with painted figures, and in medieval Japan there were original playing cards made of mussel shells. They were decorated with drawings depicting flowers, landscapes, and everyday scenes. With the help of such cards it was possible to play “solitaire” - shells were laid out on the table and “doubles” were looked for among them. In the 13th century, maps became known in India and Egypt.

And in India, playing cards depicted the figure of a four-armed Shiva holding a cup, a sword, a coin and a staff. Some believe that these symbols of the four Indian classes gave rise to modern card suits.

But the Egyptian version of the origin of the cards, replicated by modern occultists, is much more popular. They claimed that in ancient times, 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, the “Minor Arcana,” became ordinary playing cards, and the remaining 22 “Major Arcana” became part of the mysterious Tarot deck used for fortune telling.

This version was first published in 1785 by the French occultist Etteila, and his successors, the French Eliphas Levi and Dr. Papus and the English Mathers and Crowley, created their own systems for interpreting Tarot cards. This name supposedly comes from the Egyptian “ta rosh” (“the path of kings”), and the maps themselves were brought to Europe either by Arabs or gypsies, who were often considered to have come from Egypt.

True, scientists were unable to find any evidence of such an early existence of the Tarot deck.

The appearance of maps in Europe

There are several versions about the appearance of maps in Europe. According to one of them, the beginning of playing cards dates back to the 15th century and coincides with the appearance of gypsies on European territory. According to another, the general popularity of cards, according to the Jesuit Menestrier, is attributed to the 14th century, when one little-known painter named Gikomin Gringoner invented cards for the entertainment of the insane king of France Charles VI (1368-1422), who went down in history under the name Charles the Mad. The cards were supposedly the only means that calmed the royal patient between bouts of madness. And during the reign of Charles VII (1422-1461) they were improved and then received their current name.

The long-held belief that cards were invented in France to amuse the mentally ill King Charles VI the Mad is just a legend. 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.

The first documentary news about cards dates back to 1379, when an entry appeared in the chronicle of one of the Italian cities: “A card game was introduced, originating from the country of the Saracens and called by them “naib.”

The game was apparently of a military nature, since “naib” in Arabic means “captain”, “chief”. On Arab maps only numbers were indicated for the reason that the law of Mohammed prohibited the depiction of human figures. Therefore, we can rather talk not about the invention of cards by the French, but about decorating already existing cards with figures.

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, to be associated with classes: the nobility, clergy and merchant class, while the rod symbolized the royal power that stood over them. In the French version, swords became “spades”, cups became “hearts”, denarii became “diamonds”, and “wands” became “crosses” or “clubs” (the latter word means “clover leaf” in French). . These names still sound different in different languages; for example, in England and Germany these are “shovels”, “hearts”, “diamonds” and “bludgeons”, and in Italy they are “spears”, “hearts”, “squares” and “flowers”. On German cards you can still find the old names of the suits: “acorns”, “hearts”, “bells” and “leaves”. As for the Russian word “hearts,” it comes from the word “chervonny” (“red”): it is clear that “hearts” originally referred to the red suit.

Cards quickly spread throughout all European countries, gambling games appeared on their basis, and therefore the authorities soon began to take strict measures to prohibit them. Despite this, more and more new card games were invented. Craft workshops producing cards appeared in Germany, and methods for making them improved.

In the 15th century, the type of maps that still exist today was installed in France. It is believed that the suits of cards symbolize the four most important objects of knightly use: clubs - a sword, spades - spears, diamonds - a banner and coat of arms, hearts - a shield.

There is an assumption that a deck is not a random collection of cards. 52 cards correspond to the number of weeks in a year; 4 suits are the four seasons; each suit has 13 cards, the same number of weeks in each season; the sum of all the points of 52 cards is 364, that is, the number of days in a year minus one.

Early card games were quite complex, because in addition to 56 standard cards, they used 22 “Major Arcana” plus another 20 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 hand-colored and were so expensive that only the rich could purchase them. In the 16th century, the cards were radically simplified - almost all the pictures disappeared from them, with the exception of the four “high 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). There was no such unanimity regarding the ladies - for example, the Queen of Hearts was either Judith, Helen of Troy, or Dido. The Queen of Spades has traditionally been depicted as the goddess of war - Athena, Minerva and even Joan of Arc. After much debate, the biblical Rachel began to be portrayed as the queen of spades: she was ideally suited for the role of the “queen of money”, since she robbed her own father. Finally, the Queen of Clubs, who appeared on early Italian cards as the virtuous Lucretia, turned into Argina - an allegory of vanity and vanity.

The most complex figure in the card pantheon is the jack, or, in English terminology, the squire. The word “jack” itself initially meant a servant or even a jester, but later a different meaning was established - a not entirely honest, albeit brave, adventurer. These were all the real prototypes of jacks - the French knight La Hire, nicknamed Satan (hearts), as well as the heroes of the epic Ogier the Dane (spades), Roland (diamonds) and Lancelot the Lake (clubs).

The first cards played in Europe were very expensive because... There was no lithographic printing at that time; they were drawn by hand. Cards were brought to France from Italy; there is historical evidence of this - the decree of the counting chamber of 1390, which reflects the expense of purchasing cards for the amusement of the king. Cards at that time were 22 centimeters long, which made them extremely inconvenient to play.

Maps in Russia

In our fatherland, cards appeared a long time ago, during the time of Ivan the Terrible. Already under the son of the Terrible, Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich, playing cards came to Russia in significant quantities, among other European goods. Maps were an expensive and easily perishable commodity, so they were transported in durable oak barrels. Already from the beginning of the 16th century, cards became a common item of bargaining throughout Russia, and card games began to cause significant harm to morality and law and order. In 1649, the Code of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich qualified card playing as a serious crime. Before Peter the Great's time, maps in Russia were imported.

The great innovator Peter the Great adopted many European customs, but did not like cards and played them very rarely. But it was under him that the domestic production of playing cards first arose in two small manufactories in Moscow. Peter’s personal attention and full support of card manufactories were explained by completely prosaic reasons - the state, exhausted by the Northern War, needed money, which was brought in by trading in playing cards.

Throughout the 17th century, playing cards were produced by small workshops in capitals and even provincial cities. Some workshops even had a certain range of types of cards produced, however, very modest. The design of the cards was simple and remained virtually unchanged for decades.

During the reign of Catherine the Second, the good idea of ​​a state monopoly on the production of playing cards was born, and under Alexander the First, it was realized. The income from the production of cards went to a charitable cause - it supported the Office of the Empress Maria, which took care of orphans. Direct production of cards was launched in the suburbs of St. Petersburg, at the state-owned Alexander Manufactory, where the Imperial Card Factory began operating in 1819.

For more than 20 years, the formation of a new production took place, until Russian cards began to be produced on Russian paper and mainly by Russian masters. The director of the Card Factory, A. Ya. Wilson, sought to improve the appearance of the cards, and new designs were developed. Emperor Nicholas the First was presented with a corresponding report, on which he, however, wrote in his own hand: “I see no reason to change the previous drawings.”

After the abolition of serfdom, significant changes began at the Card Factory. Director A. Ya. Wilson, who held this position for more than 40 years, left the management of the factory. Free workers were hired to replace serfs, more than 60 new machines were purchased, and the experienced master Winkelmann became the head of production. Along with updating the technical side of the matter, the need arose to change the artistic design of the cards.

Atlas maps

The well-known Atlas playing cards are so familiar to our eyes that all other cards seem unusual to us and certainly somehow “non-Russian”. Indeed, Atlas cards have been the most common and popular playing cards in Russia for many decades. They seem to exist from the beginning, like Russian folk songs or Russian fairy tales. But this is not so - these maps have an author, and they appeared in Russia in the mid-19th century.

They took the issue of changing and decorating the cards quite seriously. The development of new drawings of playing cards was entrusted to academicians of painting Adolph Iosifovich Charlemagne (Bode-Charlemagne) and Alexander Egorovich Beideman. The artists created several sketches that are still, after a century and a half, wonderful examples of card graphics and decorate the collection of the State Russian Museum and the Peterhof Card Museum. However, quite simple and artistically laconic drawings by Academician Charlemagne were put into production, which we now know as Atlas Maps.

Adolf Iosifovich Charlemagne came from a family of Russified Frenchmen. His father Joseph Ivanovich Charlemagne (1782-1861) and brother Joseph Iosifovich Charlemagne (1824-1870) were famous architects. The future academician of painting studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts in the class of historical and battle painting. In 1855, Adolphe Charlemagne was awarded a large academic gold medal for his painting “Suvorov on St. Gotthard”. Along with the medal, he received the right to a six-year trip abroad, which he went on in 1856. In 1859, Charlemagne painted the painting “Suvorov’s Last Night in Switzerland,” for which he was awarded the title of academician of painting.

Returning to St. Petersburg after an internship abroad, Charlemagne works a lot as an illustrator in magazines, collaborates on the State Expedition for the Procurement of Securities, paints churches, and even participates in preparing costumes for the “Historical Ball” of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich. Work for a card factory was one of these orders. Who knew that this artist’s creation would become immortal!

It can be explained why this particular playing card project became so successful. Academician Beideman's drawings, like other sketches by Charlemagne, were very attractive artistically, but they turned out to be not quite suitable for such mass production as the printing of playing cards. The sketch of the Atlas maps was made for printing in four colors - black, yellow, blue and red. However, not only “manufacturability” played a role in success. The drawing of the card figures turned out to be so laconic, so devoid of unnecessary details and complex angles, that success was simply inevitable.

A.I. Charlemagne did not create a fundamentally new card style. Atlas cards were the result of exclusively masterful processing of pre-existing card drawings, which were used back in the 17th and early 18th centuries in Moscow card factories maintained by tax farmers. However, these, as one might call them, “old” drawings were based on the so-called “North German picture,” which also came from a very ancient folk French card deck.

It is a rare artist, poet, or writer who creates a work that, after some time, loses its authorship and becomes simply a folk song, a folk tale. Such creative luck befell Adolph Iosifovich Charlemagne, whose drawings in the form of playing cards can be found in every home.

Modernity

Gradually, card games were divided into commercial ones, based on clear mathematical calculations, and gambling games, where chance ruled everything. If the first (vint, whist, preference, bridge, poker) established themselves among educated people, then the second (sec, “point”, shtoss and hundreds of others, right down to the harmless “throwing 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, cards began to be used for completely non-intellectual activities. If they depict naked girls, there is no time for bridge. But this is a completely different game...

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Rarely a modern person 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.

Cards have an ancient and very dramatic history. The long-held belief that cards were invented in France to amuse the mentally ill King Charles VI the Mad is just a legend. 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 two main versions. 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, first sticks and then strips of paper with the designations of various symbols were used for games. 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 a four-armed Shiva holding a cup, a sword, a coin and a staff. Some believe that these symbols of the four Indian classes gave rise to modern card suits.

The Chinese complicated the game of dice and got dominoes. Then, instead of dots, the tablets began to depict figures, flowers, and everyday scenes. Such signs were used for the solitaire-like game mahjong, common in China and Japan. The essence of the game is to make pairs of identical ones from the many tablets poured onto the table. From Asia, Italian travelers brought to Europe the idea of ​​using cards with images for games. Surprisingly, neither dice, nor dominoes, nor mahjong disappeared with the advent of cards - a perfect example of the coexistence of different branches of evolution.

But the Egyptian version of the origin of the cards, replicated by modern occultists, is much more popular. They claimed that in ancient times, 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 - the "Minor Arcana" - became ordinary playing cards, and the remaining 22 "Major Arcana" became part of the mysterious Tarot deck used for fortune telling. This version was first published in 1785 by the French occultist Etteila, and his successors, the French Eliphas Levi and Dr. Papus and the English Mathers and Crowley, created their own systems for interpreting Tarot cards. The name supposedly comes from the Egyptian “ta rosh” (“the path of kings”), and the maps themselves were brought to Europe either by Arabs or gypsies, who were often considered to have come from Egypt.

True, scientists were unable 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, card games were banned in the city of Bern, and ten years later, a shocked papal envoy watched in horror as the monks enthusiastically played cards near the walls of their monastery. In 1392, Jacquemin Gringonner, the jester of the mentally ill French King Charles VI, drew a deck of cards to amuse his master. The deck of that time differed from the current one in one detail: it had only 32 cards. There were four ladies missing, whose presence seemed unnecessary at the time. Only in the next century did Italian artists begin to depict Madonnas not only in paintings, but also on maps.

There is an assumption that a deck is not a random collection of cards. 52 cards are the number of weeks in a year, four suits are the four seasons. Green suit is a symbol of energy and vitality, spring, west, water. In medieval cards, the sign of the suit was depicted using a rod, staff, or stick with green leaves, which were simplified to black spades when printing cards. The red color symbolized beauty, north, spirituality. Cups, bowls, hearts, and books were depicted on the card of this suit. The yellow suit is a symbol of intelligence, fire, south, and business success. The playing card depicted a coin, a rhombus, a lit torch, the sun, fire, and a golden bell. Blue suit is a symbol of simplicity and decency. The sign of this suit was an acorn, crossed swords, swords.

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, to be associated with classes: the nobility, clergy and merchant class, while the rod symbolized the royal power that stood over them. In the French version, swords became “spades”, cups became “hearts”, denarii became “diamonds”, and “wands” became “crosses” or “clubs” (the latter word means “clover leaf” in French). . These names still sound different in different languages; for example, in England and Germany these are “shovels”, “hearts”, “diamonds” and “bludgeons”, and in Italy they are “spears”, “hearts”, “squares” and “flowers”. On German cards you can still find the old names of the suits: “acorns”, “hearts”, “bells” and “leaves”. As for the Russian word "hearts", it comes from the word "chervonny" ("red"): it is clear that "hearts" originally referred to the red suit.

Early card games were quite complex, because in addition to 56 standard cards, they used 22 “Major Arcana” plus another 20 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 hand-colored and were so expensive that only the rich could purchase them. In the 16th century, the cards were radically simplified - almost all the pictures disappeared from them, with the exception of the four “high 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). There was no such unanimity regarding the ladies - for example, the Queen of Hearts was either Judith, Helen of Troy, or Dido. The Queen of Spades was traditionally depicted as the goddess of war - Athena, Minerva and even Joan of Arc. After much debate, the biblical Rachel began to be portrayed as the Queen of Spades: she was ideal for the role of the “queen of money”, since she robbed her own father. Finally, the Queen of Clubs, on early Italian maps, appearing as the virtuous Lucretia, turned into Argina - an allegory of vanity and vanity.

- a frivolous figure in tights, a jester's cap, bells... And in his hands - a scepter with a man's head strung on it, which has now been replaced by humane artists with musical "cymbals". In pre-revolutionary stage performances, a similar character was called Fradiavolo. " " is taller than all, it has no suit and is considered the strongest in the game. Thus, at the top of the pyramid is not the King, but Daus...

Ace is a word of Polish origin from the German Daus. The German-Russian dictionary indicates the meaning of the word: Daus - devil. It is quite possible that Daus is a corruption of the Greek "diabolos" - a dispeller of slander.

The most complex figure in the card pantheon is the jack, or, in English terminology, the squire. The very word “jack” at first meant a servant or even a jester, but later a different meaning was established - a not entirely honest, although brave, adventurer. These were all the real prototypes of jacks - the French knight La Hire, nicknamed Satan (hearts), as well as the heroes of the epic Ogier the Dane (spades), Roland (diamonds) and Lancelot the Lake (clubs).

“Trump” cards, their very name, have their own special purpose. "Kosher" i.e. Talmudists call ritual sacrifices “pure”... which, as you understand, is connected with Kabbalah.

Nevertheless, each researcher gives his own interpretations of suits and figures. Father Menestrier believed that the cards are symbols of the great monarchies (Jewish, Greek, Roman, French), and the four ladies are nothing more than the main female virtues: piety, motherhood, wisdom and beauty. Others believe that “ladies” depict such historical figures as Maria of Anjou, Agnes Sorel, Isabella of Bavaria and Joan of Arc. But hypotheses remain hypotheses.

One Greek legend attributes the invention of cards to Palamedes, the son of the Euboean king Nauplias, a very smart and cunning man who managed, for example, to expose Odysseus himself. Odysseus wanted to stay away from 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 also harnessed a donkey to the plow with his oxen, and began to sow the field not with grains, but to scatter salt into the furrows. However, Palamedes immediately saw through the deception.

He returned to the palace, took Odysseus’s son Telemachus from the cradle, brought him to the field and laid him in a furrow in front of a team of oxen and a donkey. Odysseus, of course, turned to the side, thereby giving himself away. This cunning of Palamedes was the basis for various inventions being attributed to him. He allegedly invented scales, letters, dice, some measures, and during the many-year siege of Troy -. And this happened 1000 years BC!

By the 13th century, maps were already known and popular throughout Europe. From this moment on, the history of the development of cards becomes clearer, but rather monotonous. In the Middle Ages, fortune telling was considered sinful. In addition, cards have become the most popular game during the working day - a terrible sin, according to employers of all times. Therefore, from the middle of the 13th century, the history of the development of cards turns into the history of prohibitions associated with them.

For example, in France in the 17th century, householders in whose apartments played gambling card games paid a fine, were deprived of their civil rights and were expelled from the city. Card debts were not recognized by law, and parents could recover a large sum from the 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 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 game 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 “Code” of 1649 under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, it was prescribed to deal with players “as it is written about the tatas,” that is, to beat them with a whip and deprive them of fingers and hands by cutting off.

A decree of 1696 under Peter I ordered that anyone suspected of wanting to play cards be searched, "... and anyone whose cards are taken out should be beaten with a whip." These punitive sanctions and similar ones that followed were due to the costs associated with the spread of gambling card games. Along with them, there were the so-called commercial card games, as well as the use of cards for performing tricks and playing solitaire.

The development of “innocent” forms of using cards was facilitated by Elizabeth Petrovna’s decree of 1761 dividing the use of cards into those prohibited for gambling and those permitted for commercial games. The route of penetration of cards into Russia is not entirely clear. 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 designs for playing cards began. Academicians of painting Adolf Iosifovich Charlemagne and Alexander Egorovich Beideman studied it. It is worth noting that their sketches are currently stored in the State Russian Museum and the Peterhof Card Museum. However, the drawings of Academician Adolf Iosifovich Charlemagne, which we now know as Atlas Maps, were put into production.

A.I. Charlemagne did not create a fundamentally new card style. The drawings on the Atlas cards were based on the so-called “North German picture”, which also came from a very ancient folk French card deck.

The new map sketches that were created did not have their own names. The concept of “satin” in the mid-19th century referred to the technology of their manufacture. Satin is a special type of smooth, glossy, shiny silk fabric. The paper on which they were printed was first rubbed with talcum powder on special rolling machines. In 1855, a dozen decks of satin cards cost 5 rubles 40 kopecks.

From the end of the 18th century, the present began, covering the entire Russian culture. For example, in his youth Derzhavin lived mainly on money won at cards, and Pushkin in police reports was listed not as a poet, but as “a well-known banker in Moscow.” Gambling Nekrasov and Dostoevsky often lost their last kopecks, while the cautious Turgenev preferred playing “for fun.” In the secular society of that time, especially provincial ones, almost the only entertainment was cards and the scandals associated with them.

Gradually, card games were divided into commercial ones, based on clear mathematical calculations, and gambling games, where chance ruled everything. If the first (vint, whist, bridge, etc.) established themselves among educated people, then the second (seka, “point”, shtoss and hundreds of others, right down to the harmless “throw-up 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, cards began to be used for completely non-intellectual activities. If they depict naked girls, there is no time for bridge. But this is a completely different game.

It must be said that over the centuries there have been many people who want 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 maps and even introduce new colors - “sickles”, “hammers” and “stars”. True, such amateur activity was quickly stopped, and maps were stopped printing for a long time as “attributes of bourgeois decay.”

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Playing cards are known all over the world. But no one knows where and when they appeared. Some medieval theologians considered them a “devilish invention” that Satan invented to multiply human sins. More sensible people argued that this could not be, because cards were originally used for fortune telling and other magical rituals, that is, for knowing the will of God.

Very interesting 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 the calendar. With the help of cards, he told people about the four components of the universe - fire, water, air and earth, which represent the four card suits. Much later, already in the Middle Ages, Jewish Kabbalists fleshed out this ancient message. According to them, the suits embody four classes of elemental spirits: diamonds for the fire spirits of the salamanders, worms for the lords of the air elements of the sylphs, clubs for the water spirits of the undines and spades for the lords of the underworld of the gnomes.

Other medieval mystics believed that the cards symbolized the four "chief aspects of human nature": the suit of hearts represents love; clubs the desire for knowledge; diamonds are a passion for money, and spades 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 reflect our life in all its complexity and unpredictability. This is where the bewitching power of excitement lies within them, to the great indignation of puritans and bigots of all times and peoples; in this sense, neither chess, nor dominoes, or indeed any other games can compare with cards.

However, no less interesting is the version according to which the cards supposedly reflect... time. In fact, red and black colors are consonant with the ideas of day and night. 52 sheets correspond to the number of weeks in a year, and the joker, which is not clear to everyone, also symbolizes a leap year. The four suits are quite consistent 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 sum of points in the deck will be 364. By adding a “one” joker, we get the number of days in the 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 most likely. According to the first, they were created by Indian Brahmins around 800 AD. Another version says that maps 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 payments, but also for gambling. In addition to digital nominations, the banknotes depicted emperors, their wives, and provincial governors, which indicated the dignity of a particular banknote. And since players did not always have a sufficient number of banknotes, they instead used duplicates drawn on pieces of paper, which eventually drove real money out of games.

The time of the appearance of maps in Europe is equally uncertain, although most historians agree that most likely they were brought with them by participants in the Crusades in the 11th-13th centuries. True, it is possible that this object 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 prohibiting card games in France under penalty of whipping.

In Europe, the Arabic original underwent significant revision, since the Koran forbade the faithful to draw images of people. Presumably, the birthplace of cards with figures of kings, queens and squires/jacks was France, where at the turn of the 13th-14th centuries the artist Gragonner painted cardboard sheets for Charles VI.

The earliest known European Tarot card deck (Sometimes the names Tarot or Tarok are found - editor's note) was made in the 14th century in Lombardy. It contained 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: king, queen, knight and squire. In addition to these 56 cards, it included another 22 trump cards with numbers from 0 to 21, which bore the following names: jester, magician, nun, empress, emperor, monk, lover, chariot, justice, hermit, fate, strength, executioner, death, moderation, devil, inn, star, moon, sun, world and judgment.

As card games grew in popularity in Europe throughout the 14th century, all trump cards and the four knights gradually disappeared from the Tarot deck. True, the jester remained, renamed in our days to the “joker”. Full decks were preserved only for fortune telling.

There were several reasons for this. Firstly, 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 difficult to remember. And finally, 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 “thinned out” to the current 52 cards.

As for the designation of suits, from the original Italian system with its swords an analogue of future spades, clubs clubs, cups hearts and coins diamonds, three later emerged: Swiss with acorns, roses, leaves and coat of arms; German with acorns, leaves, hearts and bells, and French with clubs, spades, hearts and diamonds. The most stable was the French system of depicting suits, which after the Thirty Years' War (1618 - 1648) supplanted the rest of the symbolism and is now in use 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, and 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. In France, allegorical figures of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and Health appeared. 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-vanished characters of card figures, and the drawings on picture cards in modern decks bear little resemblance to real-life personalities. This is nothing more than a stylization of stylizations, infinitely far from the original originals. Meanwhile, initially, for example, the four kings symbolized the legendary heroic rulers of antiquity, whom Europeans could admire in the Middle Ages: Charlemagne, the king of the Franks, led the suit of hearts, the shepherd and singer David the spades, since thanks to his exploits he became the legendary Hebrew king; Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great were respectively given the suit of diamonds and clubs.

True, in some decks the King of Hearts was alternately depicted as the hairy Esau, Constantine, Charles I, Victor Hugo, or the French general Boulanger. And yet, in the dispute for possession of the crown, Charlemagne won a bloodless victory. Modern cards lovingly, almost unchanged, preserve the heroic features of this illustrious husband in the form of a wise old man, wrapped in an ermine robe - a symbol of wealth. In his left hand he holds 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 triumphed and David again took his rightful place among card royalty.

Although Julius Caesar was never a king, he also entered the crowned Areopagus. He was usually depicted in profile, and on some ancient 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 suit of diamonds was traditionally identified with money and wealth.

Alexander the Great is the only card king in whose hand the orb, a symbol of the monarchy, was placed. True, on modern maps it is often replaced by a sword as evidence of his military talents. Unfortunately, the appearance of the King of Clubs became a victim of ruthless fashion and from a courageous hero with a fierce look, he turned into a pampered courtier with a dandy beard and an elegant mustache.

The first queen of hearts was Helen of Troy. In addition to her, Elissa, the founder of Carthage, acted as contenders for this throne in Roman mythology Dido, Joan of Arc, Elizabeth I of England, Roxana, Rachel and Fausta. However, the long-lived heroine of the biblical legend Judith, whose image has wandered from decks to decks.

As for the Queen of Spades, it was customary to depict her as the Greek goddess of wisdom and war, Pallas Athena. True, the Teutons and Scandinavians preferred their own mythological characters who personified war.

In the 14th-15th centuries, artists could not agree on who to choose as the prototype of the lady of the tambourine. The only exception was France, where it 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” appealed to the general public, and she established herself on this throne.

For a long time, none of the mythological or historical heroines claimed the role of the queen of clubs. Sometimes the decks showed figures of the ruler of Troy, Hecuba or Florimela, personifications of feminine charm created by the talent of the English poet Spenser. But they failed to establish themselves in this role. In the end, the French came up with the idea to depict the queen of clubs in the form of a sort of, as they now say, 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, the next favorites and mistresses of the French monarchs, the heroines of evil lampoons and frivolous witticisms, began to bear the name Argina.

Initially, four nameless knights played the role of jacks. Although the name of this card is translated rather as “servant, lackey,” and players have traditionally identified this figure with an adventurer who does not always respect the law, but is alien to low deceit. This interpretation of the word “jack” fits perfectly with the image of the jack of hearts. Trying to choose a worthy image for him, the French chose the famous historical character Etienne de Vignelles, who served in the troops of Charles VII. He was a valiant warrior, brave, generous, ruthless and sarcastic. For some time he served as an adviser to Joan of Arc and was preserved in the memory of posterity as a hero of folklore, like Till Eulenspiegel, William Tell and Robin Hood. Perhaps that is why, without any objections from other nations, Etienne de Vignelles 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 Toledo steel blades, which were usually drawn on this map. In numerous legends, this hero performed numerous feats: he defeated giants, returned their possessions to 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, granted 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.

The card masters chose Sir Lancelot himself, the eldest of the knights of the Round Table, as the jack of clubs. He was originally the brightest of the jacks. But gradually the manner of drawing changed, and the jack of clubs lost his 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, having been wounded in the thigh by an arrow, nevertheless managed to defeat thirty knights...
This is the gallery of family portraits, which none of the players suspects when they pick up the satin deck.