In effect it’s not a complete deck, but there are cards of three different packs of the same style (International Playing Cards Society Journal 30-3 page 139) There is some evidence to suggest that this deck may have evolved from an earlier 48-card deck that had only two court cards per suit, and some further evidence to suggest that earlier Chinese cards brought to Europe may have travelled to Persia, which then influenced the Mameluke and other Egyptian cards of the time before their reappearance in Europe. Mayer in the Topkapi Sarayi Museum, Istanbul, in 1939 this particular complete pack was not made before 1400, but the complete deck allowed matching to a private fragment dated to the twelfth or thirteenth century. A complete pack of Mameluke playing cards was discovered by L.A. The Mameluke court cards showed abstract designs not depicting persons (at least not in any surviving specimens) though they did bear the names of military officers. Each suit contained ten 'spot' cards (cards identified by the number of suit symbols or 'pips' they show) and three 'court' cards named malik (King), nā'ib malik (Viceroy or Deputy King), and thānī nā'ib (Second or Under-Deputy). In particular, the Mameluke deck contained 52 cards comprising four 'suits': polo sticks, coins, swords, and cups. It is likely that the ancestors of modern cards arrived in Europe from the Mamelukes of Egypt in the late 1300s, by which time they had already assumed a form very close to those in use today. Passages have been quoted from various works, of or relative to this period, but modern research leads to the supposition that the word rendered cards has often been mistranslated or interpolated. Boccaccio, Chaucer and other writers of that time specifically refer to various games, but there is not a single passage in their works that can be fairly construed to refer to cards. If cards were generally known in Europe as early as 1278, it is very remarkable that Petrarch, in his work De remediis utriusque fortunae that treats gaming, never once mentions them. The 38th canon of the council of Worcester (1240) is often quoted as evidence of cards having been known in England in the middle of the 13th century but the games de rege et regina there mentioned are now thought to more likely have been chess. The time and manner of the introduction of cards into Europe are matters of dispute. This is an area that still needs research. The Chinese word pái (牌) is used to describe both paper cards and gaming tiles.Īn Indian origin for playing cards has been suggested by the resemblance of symbols on some early European decks (traditional Sicilian cards, for example) to the ring, sword, cup, and baton classically depicted in the four hands of Indian statues. In Kuei-t'ien-lu, a chinese text redacted in the 11th century, we found that dominoes cards were printed during the T’ang dynasty, contemporarily to the first books. However it may be that the first deck of cards ever printed was a Chinese domino deck, in whose cards we can see all the 21 combinations of a pair of dice. The designs on modern Mahjong tiles likely evolved from those earliest playing cards. Wilkinson suggests in The Chinese origin of playing cards that the first cards may have been actual paper currency which were both the tools of gaming and the stakes being played for. These were represented by ideograms, with numerals of 2–9 in the first three suits and numerals 1–9 in the 'tens of myriads'. Ancient Chinese 'money cards' have four 'suits': coins (or cash), strings of coins (which may have been misinterpreted as sticks from crude drawings), myriads of strings, and tens of myriads. The origin of playing cards is obscure, but it is almost certain that they began in China after the invention of paper. In most games, the cards are assembled into a deck, and their order is randomized by shuffling The back of each card is identical for all cards, usually a plain colour or abstract design. The front (or 'face') of each card carries markings that distinguish it from the other cards and determine its use under the rules of the game being played. Because they are both standard and commonly available, playing cards are often adapted for other uses, such as magic tricks, cartomancy, or building a house of cards. A deck of cards is used for playing one of many card games, some of which include gambling. A complete set of cards is a pack or deck.

A playing card is a typically hand-sized piece of heavy paper or thin plastic.

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