Chess piece (Knight)

This is a Knight chess piece in good condition. The figurine is 2.7 cm high and has a diameter of 1.9 cm. The work dates to the late 13th–early 14th centuries. These types of chess pieces are attributed to the Eastern abstract style, which formed in the Arabic lands. They spread into Europe in two stages: with the 8th-century Arab invasion into Southern Europe and the Dnieper-Daugava trade route that connected Scandinavia with Mesopotamia and Persia in the 9th–11th centuries. In Western and Central Europe, these types of chess pieces are usually found in cultural layers dating to the 11th–13th centuries, and in Eastern Europe – in 12th–13th/15th-century layers. To date, 20 Eastern abstract chess pieces have been found in the territory of the Vilnius Lower Castle (12 of them were found in cellar G in 2019–2020). Most were discovered in a defensive complex installed in the late 13th–early 14th centuries in the vicinity of one of the residential and representational buildings (M3).
This find is the only Eastern abstract Knight chess piece to have been found in Lithuania. To date, one later Knight piece was found in the Vilnius Lower Castle territory, but it is attributed to the 14th–16th-century new abstract chess piece style.