918 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1896. 



The carved gambling-sticks furnish a suggestion as to the probable 

 origin of the seal cylinder such as was used in ancient Babylonia. 

 Cylindrical stamps of unglazed pottery, pierced with a hole like the 

 seal-cylinder of Asia, are found in various parts of America. Such a 

 stamp from Ecuador, bearing a highly conventionalized device of a bird 

 (Plate 41, fig. 3), might readily have been derived from a carved arrow- 

 shaftment, and it is reasonable to believe that the Babyhmian seal, 

 often bearing devices of animals, and the carved gambling-stick, the 

 emblem and symbol of a man, should have had a similar origin.^ 



The set of American Indian gambling sticks may be regarded as the 

 antitype of the pack of playing-cards, to which, as will appear from 

 the Korean htou-tjyen (No. 77), they directly lead. 

 77. Htou-tjyen. Playing-Cards.^ Korea. 



[a) Pack of eighty cards. 



[h) Reproduction of native pictures: gamblers playing Htou-tjyen.^ 

 (Plate 44.) 



The cards consist of strips of oiled paper S inches long by ^ inch 

 wide. The backs are uniformly marked with the scroll a.s represented 

 on fig. 218. The cards are divided into eight suits as follows (tig. 219): 



Sa-riim (Chinese, jian), "man." 

 MouJ-lco-M (Chinese, U), "fish." 

 Ea-ma-koui (Chinese, li), "crow." 

 Eloueng (Chinese, chi), "pheasant." 

 Ko-ro (Chinese, ch^ung), "antelope." 

 Fyel (Chinese, sing), "star." 

 Htok-ki (Chinese, t'6), "rabbit." 

 Mdl (Chinese, md), " horse. "^ 



The cards of each suit are distinguished by numerals from 1 to 9 

 (fig. 220), the tenth card being designated as tji/ang, "General." (Plate 

 44.) A variety of games are played with the cards in Korea, the games 

 in general resembling those played with cards in China. At the present 

 day a pack usually consists of forty to sixty cards of four or six suits 

 instead of eight, and the suit marks are not represented upon the 

 numeral-cards, as cards of all suits have precisely the same value in 

 the commonest game. 



1 Korean Games, p. xxxii. It is gratifying to the writer that his theory of the origin 

 of the seal-cylinder should have received such ready accei)tance and confirmation by 

 his colleague, Prof. Herman V. Hilprecht, of the University of Pennsylvania. In his 

 Old Babylonian Inscriptions (I, Pt. 2, Philadelphia, 1896, p. 36), hewrites : "It becomes 

 novr very evident that the Babylonian seal-cylinder, with its peculiar shape and use, 

 has developed out of the hollow shaft of an arrow marked with symbols and figures, 

 and is but a continuation and elaboration in a more artistic form of an ancient primi- 

 tive idea." 



^ Cat. No. 77047, U.S.N.M. Collected by Lieut. J. B. Bernadou, U. S.N. 



3 From Korean Games. 



^ These suit marks may be regarded as the symbols of the Eight Directions, and 

 agree somewhat closely, though evidently earlier, with the Eight Creatures : Horse, 

 Ox, Dragon, Fowl, Swine, Pheasant, Dog, Goat, associated with the Eight Diagrams. 



