ABSTRACT

The search for a definite identification of the chekker (éschiquier, Schachtbrett, exaquier, etc.) has reached an impasse for a number of reasons, of which the most obvious are the incompleteness and the contradictory nature of the known documentary evidence. 1 Was the chekker an instrument unlike any known to us from surviving examples or was the name applied to an instrument that we now know by another name? Or, to ask the same question in another way, does the gradual disappearance of the term ‘chekker’ in the 16th century indicate the gradual falling into obsolescence of a unique instrument or does the disappearance of the term merely mean that another name for the same instrument replaced ‘chekker’ and its cognates during the 16th century?