"It is remarkable," says Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, in "Ancient Egyptians" (Vol. II, page 415), "that a game so common as Mora among the lower order of Italians should be found to have existed in Egypt from the earliest period of which their paintings remain, even in the reign of the First Osirtasen." The game, which requires no accessories, is skillfully played by holding up certain fingers to an opponent, who tries to guess the number; it was probably carried to the Southern ports of Italy by the Egyptians, when the yearly voyage was made to the Bay of Naples, at the time that the great Temple of the Serapeon was erected at Pozzuoli and the cult of Thoth Hermes introduced. Draughts were also found in early days at or about the same place, and that game is represented as being played on the sculptures of Beni Hassan in grottoes on the east bank of the Nile. The same authority says: "This would be coeval with Joseph, or 1740 B. C." An anonymous writer in an English paper states that one of the frescoes of the palace of Rameses II shows the mighty Pharaoh himself playing against some of the beauties of his harem. Many writers consider that the Roman Latronculi and the Greek Digrammisnios were games of Chess or Draughts. A Spaniard, named Antonio Torquemada, published rules for the latter as early as 1547, and a Frenchman, named Pierre Malet, described the Parisian game in 1668. The latter called for a board of sixty-four squares, the men moving but one block at a time, and the crowned pieces having the right to move backwards. The game was not popular in France until the days of the Regency, when the Polish game, that is played on a board with one hundred squares, each player having twenty pieces, became the vogue. This variation of the old game of Draughts was introduced by a man named Manoury, who started life as a waiter in one of the cafés. He gave lessons to Marshal Saxe and Jean Jacques Rousseau, besides writing out the rules governing the game for the use of his pupils. In France and England players use the black squares on the Checker board, but in Holland and Russia the white ones are those that are favoured, and it is strange how puzzling this slight change is to unaccustomed players.