Jaredite Chess

The Follow Him podcast last week highlighted a very interesting thought about the wars of the Jaredites that came from Hugh Nibley. The first highlighted that “he suggests that the Nephites came around Africa and ended up on the east coast of America, and then a lot of experts think that the Jaredites started in Mesopotamia and made their way through Asia and then traveled around the world to the west coast of the Americas. Well, he points out that maybe some of the customs in the differences were that the Jaredites were influenced by the people of Asia.” So that would suggest that as they made their journeyings from the tower of Babel across land that they went east through Asia. We don’t have any sense of the length of this journey, but it does appear to be long in the text, even though the main story happens after they reach the ocean that they eventually have to cross in the barges. It is possible that they soaked in some of the culture of the peoples that were in these lands as they traveled through Asia.    

With that context, Hugh Nibley said this about the possible effect of this Asiatic culture on the Jaredites: “The insane wars of the Jaredite chiefs ended in the complete annihilation of both sides, with the kings the last to go. The same thing had almost happened earlier in the days of Akish, when a civil war between him and his sons reduced the population to thirty (Ether 9:12). This all seems improbable to us, but two circumstances peculiar to Asiatic warfare explain why the phenomenon is by no means without parallel: (1) Since every war is strictly a personal contest between kings, the battle must continue until one of the kings falls or is taken. (2) And yet things are so arranged that the king must be very last to fall, the whole army existing for the sole purpose of defending his person. This is clearly seen in the game of chess, in which all pieces are expendable except the king, who can never be taken. ‘The shah in chess,’ writes M. E. Moghadam, ‘is not killed and does not die. The game is terminated when the shah is pressed to a position from which he cannot escape. This is in line with all good traditions of chess playing, and back of it the tradition of capturing the king in war rather than slaying him whenever this could be accomplished.’ You will recall the many instances in the book of Ether in which kings were kept in prison for many years but not killed. In the code of medieval chivalry, taken over from central Asia, the person of the king is sacred, and all others must perish in his defense. After the battle the victor may do what he will with his rival—and infinitely ingenious tortures were sometimes devised for the final reckoning—but as long as the war went on, the king could not die, for whenever he did die, the war was over, no matter how strong his surviving forces. Even so, Shiz was willing to spare all of Coriantumr’s subjects if he could only behead Coriantumr with his own sword. In that case, of course, the subjects would become his own. The circle of warriors, ‘large and mighty men as to the strength of men’ (Ether 15:26) that fought around their kings to the last man, represent that same ancient institution, the sacred ‘shieldwall,’ which our own Norse ancestors took over from Asia and which meets us again and again in the wars of the tribes, in which on more than one occasion the king actually was the last to perish. So let no one think the final chapter of Ether is at all fanciful or overdrawn. Wars of extermination are a standard institution in the history of Asia.”

I certainly had never associated the game of chess with the wars of the Jaredites, but the similarity is clearly there: the final war went on until there were only two kings left and all other people were gone. All people were indeed expendable in the story before the king, even women and children: “And it came to pass that when they were all gathered together, every one to the army which he would, with their wives and their children—both men, women and children being armed with weapons of war, having shields, and breastplates, and head-plates, and being clothed after the manner of war.” Those women and children all tragically died before the kings in the story. Of course, in chess the king cannot kill the other king, but in the story of the Jaredites what would have been a stalemate ended that way: “They had all fallen by the sword, save it were Coriantumr and Shiz, behold Shiz had fainted with the loss of blood. And it came to pass that when Coriantumr had leaned upon his sword, that he rested a little, he smote off the head of Shiz” (Ether 15:15, 29-30). Indeed, it seems improbable to us that the two kings would be the very last to fall in this civilization where millions perished, but understanding this cultural parallel gives credence to the story. Ultimately of course the warning from this story of the Jaredites is what matters most: we must choose to repent before it is too late. Coriantumr was given a chance by the Lord to repent and save his people, but he rejected it and a whole civilization was destroyed because of it.