The Merels Board Enigma. With the worldwide census (PDF)

How many Merels Board are there in the world? Which is the prevailing model? Which is the most frequent position that one can found? Which are the contexts where the highest number of Merels Board has been found?

This census contains more than 2.500 exemplars of Merels Board in the world, distribuited in 20 extra-European nations and 23 in Europe, where Italy hold the absolute supremacy in this inventory in continuous growth. 2.000 years of history, 100 catalogued models, 11 graphs: these are only some of the numbers that this research has produced.

We have also considered numerous contexts in which it is clear that this ludible scheme has assumed powerful symbolic meanings, much more important than it's believed. What does the Merels Board has to do with the death of Christ? Why a Knight of St. John Order made accurately paint eighty Merels Board on his own sepulchre and what's more intercalated by a mysterious saying? Why the chamberlain of the King of France, Philippe du Moulin, made it to be immured in the walls of his own castle in Sologne? And why we find a Merels Board, in vertical, on the throne where 32 sovereigns of the Sacred Roman Empire were crowned? Why it is called "the perfect game of God" in Sri-Lanka? Why we find manifold concentric squares on the bath containers of the new-born babies of the Fulani tribe of Nigeria? And what is the role of Merels Board, today?

These and other questions wait to be discovered and clarified through the pages of this book...