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 We all are very familiar with the deck of cards. There are 52 playing cards grouped in four suits: clubs, spades, hearts and diamonds. Each suit has cards ranking from two to ten, a jack, a queen, a king and an ace. Some games require two more cards that are different and do not belong to any suite, called jokers.
There are some people believing that the four kings in the deck of cards represent certain great kings from the history. Is said that the king of clubs is Alexander the Great, the king of spades represents the King David, the king of Hearts is Charlemagne and the king of diamonds represents Caesar Augustus.
Apparently this theory is false. The exact origin of the playing cards is not known, but there are several theories indicating Chinese, Persian or Indian origins. The first recordings of card games date back to the 14th century Europe, but at that time there were various compositions and designs for the deck of cards. The card games became very popular and spread all over Europe, but every country and every craftsman changed the suits and the face cards according to the local beliefs and traditions. The French craftsmen developed an easier method of producing the cards, being able to produce more cards than any other card makers. This is what the French deck of cards became the standard. During the 16th century the cards the face cards did had identities written on them but the character varied. On the 17th century most cards had the same characters, the four kings representing Charlemagne (hearts), Alexander (clubs), David (spades), and Caesar (diamonds) while the queens were Judith (hearts), Argine (clubs), Pallas (spades) and Rachel (diamonds). After the French revolution from the 18th century the cards makers dropped the practice of identifying the cards with famous kings and queens, the cards didn’t getting any identities ever again. |
