An unaccountable error on Mr. Disraeli's
part in the same note assigns its erection to Amenoph II, who
lived 1414 B.C.
The eminent and revered writer and statesman may not have
selected the supposed best authorities for his dates, but the
sapient critic indulges in a strange admixture of misconception.
However, Egyptian chronology is not fully agreed upon, even
Manetho and Herodotus differ some 120 years as to the time of
Sesostris, and Bishop Warburton, we read, was highly indignant
with a scholar, one Nicholas Man, who argued for the identity of
Osiris and Sesostris after he (the bishop) had said they were to be
distinguished. Respecting English origin, all authorities down to
the end of the Eighteenth century agreed in ascribing the first
knowledge of chess to the time of William the Conqueror, or to
that of the return of the first Crusaders.
Perhaps, however, it reached us in the days of Charlemagne,
and may well have done so through Alcuin of York, his friend
and tutor in the reigns of Offa and of Egbert.
Al Walid, 705-715; Harun, 786-809; the great Al Mamun,
813 to 833; and Tamerlane, 1375 to 1400, are monarchs who
honoured their chess opponents when beaten.
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