纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 061刘易斯棋子（4）（在线收听）

They're much bigger than the figures that most of us play with today. The king, for instance, is about three inches (7.5 cm) high, and he comfortably fills a clenched fist. Most of them are carved out of walrus tusks, there are a few that are made out of whales' teeth, and some of the pieces would originally have been coloured red, rather than the black that we're used to today - but all of them are now a pale creamy brown.

Let's begin with the pawns. One of the puzzles of the Lewis Chessmen is that there are lots of major pieces and very few pawns. What we've got are pieces from a number of different incomplete sets - 78 pieces in all - but only 19 pawns among them. The pawns are the only pieces that aren't human; they're simply small ivory slabs that stand upright like gravestones. In medieval society, these are the peasants, brutally conscripted on to the battle-field. All societies tend to think of the people at the bottom of the heap as interchangeably identical, and the foot-soldiers here are shown with no individuality at all.