You notice their silent stares, especially when the game takes an unexpected turn. Two red queens watch stoically and with a hint of resignation as a low-rent trio of ten, six, and five beats them. The king of spades clutches his sword and seems filled with purpose when he’s paired with a red ace; he subsequently obliterates a couple of defenseless red jacks.

You look at their faces, the expressions, the clothes they wear, the things they hold, and it’s a riddle. What exactly is that pointy thing clutched so tightly by the jack of clubs? Why is the king of hearts thrusting a sword through his head? The images and expressions are obvious and yet obscure, impenetrable as Egyptian hieroglyphics.

In fact, Egypt is exactly where "modern cards" got their start, though China gets credit for the original concept of using marked paper in games. Our first glimpse of cards in the historic record comes in 868 CE from a tome called Duyang Zabian (Collection of Miscellanea at Duyang). The author, Su E, tells us that Princess Tongchang (daughter of Emperor Yizong of Tang) played the "leaf game." Her cards looked very much like flat and pliable dominos.

In the centuries after Tongchang, cards became popular in India and spread via trade and travel to North Africa. At some point in the 1200s, Egyptians created the 52-card deck. The suits were swords, polo-sticks, cups, and coins. The court cards were king, viceroy, and second deputy (depicted with intricate designs rather than pictures). It was all there, the blueprint for modern cards. If blackjack or hold ‘em had existed back then, you could have played those games with Egyptian cards.

Keep in mind that this was thousands of years after the dynasties of the pharaohs. The rulers of Egypt in the thirteenth century were Muslim. Gambling is prohibited in the Muslim faith. Therefore, these medieval Egyptians (called Mamluks) were understandably reluctant to write about their cards and the games they played. The only contemporary evidence we have from this era is one surviving deck in the Topkapi museum in Istanbul.

However, the historical record was about to expand…

Egyptian cards crossed Gibraltar and appeared in Spain in 1371. Ten years later, they were everywhere in Europe. We know this because we have numerous accounts of legal and religious authorities in Italy, Germany, and France frantically trying to control or eradicate playing cards. A few decades later, they were burning decks by the thousands. Fortunately, wily merchants were using woodcuts to print them by the tens of thousands.

As they had in Egyptian culture, playing cards reflected the national character wherever they went. Germans changed the suits to acorns, leaves, hearts, and bells. Swiss had acorns, flowers, shields, and bells. The Spanish and Italians used the Egyptian standard swords, cups, and coins, but they substituted clubs/batons for the then unknown polo-sticks. French adopted clubs, diamonds, hearts, and spades. English card makers "followed suit."

Court cards were usually king, cavalier (knight), and knave (servant). Some decks were expanded to 56 cards with the addition of queens. Other decks substituted queens for knights, and some dropped the aces to make 48 cards. Many of these local variations are still printed and used in Europe to this day. Try playing a game of kaiserjass in Switzerland, and you’ll see what I mean.

Cards were big during the Renaissance. Not just big popular, I mean physically big, about twice the size of modern cards. There were no indices or double ends. Therefore, card makers had plenty of room to draw detailed court characters with legs, arms, necks, and so forth. They were a handsome and beautiful group. The king of hearts held a battle-ax above his head (rather than a sword through it). The knave of clubs clutched an easily identifiable arrow. The king of clubs held a cross in his right hand. On a modern card, the king’s right hand is missing, and the cross is transformed into something that looks like a potted plant that is wilting.

What happened to the art? England banned foreign cards in 1628, and the English king, Charles I, gave one company a monopoly on the domestic business. As you might expect, this lack of competition had a negative effect on card art. After a while, the English court characters began looking stubby and unrealistic. The arrow held by the knave of clubs slowly morphed into an ambiguous pointy thing. The king of hearts went from holding an axe to thrusting a sword through his head.

In contrast, the ace of spades gradually became more ornate because that is where the tax collector placed his stamp (every monopoly invariably comes with a tax). Ultra-fancy engraving ultimately replaced the stamp in an escalating attempt to foil counterfeiters. The tax was eventually abolished, but the tradition of a fancy ace of spades persists to this day.

The nineteenth century brought double-ended cards and corner indices so that cards could be read in a fan. This created a problem because king and knave begin with the same letter. And the poor knave had another problem (besides being a knave); his name was archaic. Jack was the current slang-term for everyman, sort of a nineteenth-century version of the word "dude." Polite English society initially resisted this lowbrow change, but common speech prevailed and the knave became a jack.

The joker was an American invention. Originally, it was a trump card in a game called euchre. Jokers were incorporated into poker (presumably by crossover players) in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and thus "wild cards" became standard in all English and American decks.

Also at this time, the court cards were fixed by custom in their familiar stylized forms. There is a French tradition that each of the characters represents a historic figure (the king of diamonds is Caesar and so forth), but the modern characters don’t represent anyone… at least not anymore.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, it was said that the sun never set on the British Empire, and that also applied to its cards. English decks became the international standard.

So now you know the secrets in the cards, or at least some of them. After twelve centuries, cards still have mysteries and secrets yet to be revealed. And of course, the most enduring mystery of all is…the value of the next card.

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(c) copyright 2011 Basil Nestor