“In 1329, in the register of the Chambre des Comptes of Charles VI of France, there is an entry of the royal treasurer of moneys paind one Jacquemin Gringonneur, painter, for three games of cards in gold and diverse colours, ornamented with many devices, for the diversion of our lord, the King. Seventeen of these strange old painted cards survive in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris. They are atouts from a pack of tarots, as the early European game of cards was called. . . . In a tarot series, in addition to the customary fifty-two cards, there are four cavaliers or mounted valets besides the twenty-two high cards. These last are supposed to have been taken from an Egyptian book of hieroglyphics containing the principles of an ancient mystic philosophy in a series of emblem and symbolic figures.”

—Catherine Perry Hargrave, from A History of Playing Cards, first published in 1930, and still published unabridged by Dover.