Nishapur Chess Set, Metropolitan Museum of Art

A 12th-century set of glazed stonepaste attributed to Nishapur in Iran, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and one of the earliest nearly complete chess sets anywhere. One side is glazed turquoise, the other a much darker glaze. The forms are abstract and easy to learn: the shah is a throne, the vizier a smaller throne and the elephant a lump with two tusklike points. Compare it with the Lewis chessmen, carved at much the same time, and you see two cultures playing much the same game with completely different ideas of what a piece should look like.