Papers by Thierry Depaulis
PapierS, 17, 2023
Le mot filigrane, en français, nous est si familier et sa recherche si importante pour l’histoire... more Le mot filigrane, en français, nous est si familier et sa recherche si importante pour l’histoire du papier et de l’estampe, qu’on est intrigué de constater que nul n’a abordé l’historique du terme, comme si le filigrane du papier faisait partie depuis toujours du vocabulaire du papetier. L’article démontre que cet emploi particulier, désignant une marque translucide dans le marque, n’est guère attesté avant… le XIXe siècle.
Board Game Studies Journal, 18, 2024
Excavations in Israel of Byzantine and early Islamic sites have yielded some interesting gaming b... more Excavations in Israel of Byzantine and early Islamic sites have yielded some interesting gaming boards that are not always understood by the archaeologists who found them. Because they are organised in parallel rows of 'holes', most are presented as 'mancala' gameboards-which some may be, indeed; however, boards offering three or four rows of squares or depressions cannot reasonably be mancalas, nor can they be held as 'senet', the Egyptian game. So, what are they? Reviewing the relevant literature, this article will try in this article to disentangle these finds, the more so as they are often well dated to periods which have rarely been looked into.
Documents pour l’histoire du papier en France au XVIIe siècle, Angoulême, Association Française pour l’Histoire et l’Étude du Papier et des Papeteries (CahierS de l’AFHEPP n° 2, 2020
On n’a pas toujours remarqué que le papier avait subi, en France, une taxe à la consommation entr... more On n’a pas toujours remarqué que le papier avait subi, en France, une taxe à la consommation entre 1635 et 1720, puis de 1771 à 1791.
Le Vieux Papier, 2023
Enquête sur les graveurs qui ont travaillé à graver (en bois) à Paris vers 1715-1740 des caractèr... more Enquête sur les graveurs qui ont travaillé à graver (en bois) à Paris vers 1715-1740 des caractères chinois, qui ont à peine servi…
The Playing-Card, 1990
In the Musée de Cluny, the Parisian museum specialising in medieval art, there is a fifteenth cen... more In the Musée de Cluny, the Parisian museum specialising in medieval art, there is a fifteenth century hinged game box with six game boards. Inside is a classical backgammon board, outside one can see a curious tableau bearing little inlaid ivory rectangles with Gothic lettering. The close study of the box convinced me that it was a betting layout for a card game known as "Glic". I knew of other card games using such boards, among which an early German one named Poch (not to mention le Nain Jaune and Pope Joan...); this game needs a specific board, that the Germans call Pochbrett. Furthermore the game is, like Glic, well documented from the 15th century on...
XXIII Board Game Studies Colloquium, Paris, 2021, 2022
This paper is an attempt to point out the emergence of early mind games, and to see whether this ... more This paper is an attempt to point out the emergence of early mind games, and to see whether this is correlated with the great steps of human history, in terms of social, political, technological and cognitive evolution. It is based on a new classification of board games, and on a combined chronology of dice and board games in the lands between the Indus Valley and Europe from the Late Palaeolithic to the first millennium CE. That race games dominate board games until the last centuries before the turn of the Common Era neatly appears in a chrono-typology. The rise of games of pure strategy nicely coincides with the emergence of what I call 'critical thinking' in both Greece (with the birth of 'philosophy') and China (with Confucius, Laozi, Mozi, and other thinkers). This is the 'age of criticism', as the great Italian classical scholar Arnaldo Momigliano has called it. Actually, this period, spanning from 600 to 200 BCE, has for long been singled out by historians of philosophy and religions, being dubbed the "Axial Age" (Achsenzeit) by the German philosopher Karl Jaspers in 1949. His theory has become the subject of many books and conferences, with of course diverging views, but there is a consensus about three countries that offer strikingly parallel evolutions: Greece, India and China. I therefore contend that there was a particular historical moment that may explain why board games of pure strategy, like go (weiqi) and polis, appeared there, but also that India could have developed such board games at the same time. Comparison with other continents leads to two working 'laws', that are more intended as a basis for future thoughts and improved analysis, than a definitive conclusion.
Le Vieux Papier, 440, 2021
Révélations biographiques sur Daumont, éditeur d'estampes à Paris au XVIIIe siècle
Board Game Studies Journal, 14, 2020, 2020
It has for long been accepted that one of the earliest known board games was the celebrated 'Roya... more It has for long been accepted that one of the earliest known board games was the celebrated 'Royal Game of Ur' (Fig. 1), that is exhibited in the British Museum and is dated to around 2500 BCE (Becker 2007; Finkel 2007: 17). The game of 'twenty squares'-the type of game that is exemplified by the 'Royal Game of Ur'-is indeed one of the oldest known board games. As Sumer is sometimes dubbed the 'cradle of civilization', it was assumed that there could be some sort of correlation between the rise of earliest states and the birth of board games. Although very simplistic, the hypothesis receives some kind of support from ancient Egypt. There too we have board games-senet (or znt) and mehen (mhn)-which appear as early as the first dynasties, and seem to accompany the rise of the Egyptian civilization. If we leave apart a miniature board from el-Mahasna, which is exhibited in the Musées royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, in Brussels, and which is assigned to the Naqada I period (ca 4000-3500 BCE), because there are doubts about its actual function (Crist, Dunn-Vaturi, de Voogt 2016: 41-43), boards for playing senet (Fig. 2)-at least fragmentary-appear in the First Dynasty (ca 3100-2900 BCE). Mehen, another board game from ancient Egypt, offers examples that date back to the end of the fourth millennium BCE, in other words around 3000 BCE (Crist, Dunn-Vaturi, de Voogt 2016: 17). Keeping with these very early times we can see that the Indus civilization also had board games. Although they are hard to characterize, because the few gameboards that have been unearthed are just fragments, and the field is 'invaded' with small objects often interpreted as 'gamesmen' (or 'pendants'…), and even sometimes as… chessmen, it is clear that the game of 'twenty squares' was also known there. Not only were terracotta fragments of gameboards excavated at Mohenjo-daro, but four fragmentary boards, made of stone, were unearthed at Dholavira, Gujarat, two of which being easily recognizable as parts of 'twenty squares' games (Bisht 2015: 8.9.4.1., p. 594-6) (Fig. 3-forget the 'gamesmen'). The city of Dholavira flourished between ca 2500 and ca 2000 BCE.
Print Quarterly, vol. XXXVII, no. 2, juin 2020, 2020
The Playing-Card, 1987
An old article in three parts about the early history of the game of Ombre, still valuable.
The Playing-Card, 1987
An old article in three parts about the early history of the game of Ombre, still valuable.
The Playing-Card, 1987
An old article in three parts about the early history of the game of Ombre, still valuable.
The Playing-Card, vol. 48, no. 4, 2020
Le Vieux Papier, fasc. 424, avril 2017, 2017
Le Vieux Papier, fasc. 423, janvier 2017, 2017
Le Vieux Papier, fasc. 422, octobre 2016, 2016
Le Vieux Papier, fasc. 421, juillet 2016, 2016
The Playing-Card, 2018
A son tour, Detlef Hoffmann reprenait ce cavalier d'épée dans son livre Le monde de la carte à jo... more A son tour, Detlef Hoffmann reprenait ce cavalier d'épée dans son livre Le monde de la carte à jouer (Leipzig, 1972), . Bien que ces cartes aient été régulièrement mentionnées (par Cicognara, Cibrario, Kaplan et d'autres) comme des tarots, Michael Dummett émet de sérieux doutes :
Revue Archimède. ARCHÉOLOGIE ET HISTOIRE ANCIENNE N°6 , 2019
A pluridisciplinary approach, crossing archaeological, written and iconographic sources allows us... more A pluridisciplinary approach, crossing archaeological, written and iconographic sources allows us to grasp the modes of circulation of play and games in the ancient Mediterranean. This special issue opens several avenues of research on the identity issues, real or imaginary, conveyed by ancient play culture, from pharaonic Egypt to the end of Antiquity.
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Papers by Thierry Depaulis
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Une approche pluridisciplinaire, croisant données archéologiques, écrites et iconographiques permet de saisir les modes de circulation des jeux en Méditerranée antique. Ce dossier ouvre plusieurs pistes de recherche sur les enjeux identitaires, réels ou imaginaires de la culture ludique
antique dans la longue durée, de l’Égypte pharaonique à la fin de l’Antiquité.
A pluridisciplinary approach, crossing archaeological, written and iconographic sources allows us to grasp the modes of circulation of play and games in the ancient Mediterranean. This special issue opens several avenues of research on the identity issues, real or imaginary, conveyed by ancient play culture, from pharaonic Egypt to the end of Antiquity.