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Sabio Tarot · History and curiosities

By Sabio Tarot

Did tarot come from Egypt? The history of an idea

If a deck today shows pyramids or hieroglyphs, its Egyptian inspiration may be plain to see. That does not prove that the earliest tarot cards were made in ancient Egypt. Separating the inspiration behind an edition from the historical origin of the game lets us appreciate a symbolic tradition without treating it as a fact unsupported by surviving objects.

The earliest known tarot references appear in northern Italy in the 1440s and 1450s, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Victoria and Albert Museum explains that esoteric writers in the 1780s claimed an Egyptian origin for the cards, a claim that remains unproven. More than three centuries separate those moments.

Where the connection came from

Tarot's history did not stop with its use as a game. In the late eighteenth century, cartomancy and occult interpretations offered new ways to understand the cards. In that setting, describing tarot as a storehouse of very ancient wisdom could lend authority to a contemporary practice. The V&A places publications claiming Egyptian origins in the 1780s and explains how Etteilla brought that interest into his cartomancy.

Three statements need separating. “A writer in the late eighteenth century believed in or claimed an Egyptian origin” is a fact about the history of ideas. “A modern deck uses Egyptian motifs” is a visual fact about that deck. “The earliest tarot cards came from Egypt” is a claim about the objects' provenance and needs documents or objects showing transmission. The first two statements do not prove the third.

An overly broad denial does not help either. Playing cards have a long, complex history across cultures. Documenting tarot in Italy does not mean that all its visual elements, playing cards in general or divinatory practices sprang up there from nothing. The specific question is when the structure we call tarot appeared and what evidence supports an Egyptian lineage for that structure.

What surviving cards tell us

The Met describes Italian suits—Cups, Swords, Wands and Coins—and pictorial trumps in the early evidence. Milanese objects linked to the Visconti and Sforza families include paintings on card with gilded backgrounds. The V&A holds painted and gilded Italian cards dating to around 1490. These details point to traceable places, materials and images.

Figures such as emperors, popes, virtues and Death belonged to the European visual vocabulary that players of those games could recognise. To claim that such a figure is really an encoded translation of a hieroglyph, you must demonstrate the link; noticing a suggestive resemblance is not enough. Visual analogies can inspire readings, but they do not establish historical descent by themselves.

When you encounter an origin claim, ask: “What dated object or document connects one stage to the next?” If a story jumps from ancient Egypt to fifteenth-century Milan and offers only interpretations written in eighteenth-century Paris, the very bridge it needs is missing.

How to read an Egyptian-inspired tarot deck

A deck presented as Egyptian may have its own coherent system. Its creator may have selected names, scenes and associations worth studying. Read its publication date and guidebook as part of a particular editorial tradition. If you want to use it, describe its images and check how its cards correspond—or do not correspond—to the suits and trumps of another deck.

You need not settle a historical dispute before using symbols for reflection. You should, however, describe those symbols' origins accurately. “This edition interprets tarot through Egyptian imagery” tells readers what they are buying. “This is what the original tarot looked like” promises something the cited sources do not establish.

For the chronology, read where the first tarot decks appear and when tarot cartomancy began. The history of tarot guide brings together the main stages.

Three ways an association becomes an “origin”

The first is resemblance. Someone sees a symbol in two traditions and decides that one descended from the other. Resemblance can justify a research question, but turning it into a genealogy requires dates, paths of transmission and contexts of use. Human figures, stars and animals recur in many cultures; a likeness alone cannot show who borrowed what from whom.

The second is the authority of a story. An influential writer may say a deck preserves the secrets of an ancient civilisation. Later readers repeat the claim, and repetition creates the impression of independent evidence even when every version comes from the same text. To check, trace the citations back: do new objects appear, or only new paraphrases? The V&A helps place the Egyptian idea in the history of eighteenth-century interpretation. That documents what those authors claimed, not the origin they proposed.

The third is retrospective design. A publisher creates a deck with Egyptian architecture or motifs and calls it “Egyptian tarot”. That name may accurately describe its appearance or method. The problem comes when a recent edition is used as evidence that early Italian cards looked the same. Check the deck's printing date, not only the past to which it alludes.

A short protocol for checking a lineage

Ask four questions in order: What is the oldest tarot object supporting the argument? Which specific feature does it share with an identified Egyptian source? Is there a document connecting the two objects historically? Are there alternative explanations for the resemblance? If the third question cannot be answered, the hypothesis may be intriguing but unproven. If the answer is an esoteric text from the eighteenth century, we have established only when someone proposed the connection.

The same care lets us read a symbolic tradition respectfully. You can say, “In this system, the card is interpreted through an Egyptian myth,” and study what that association adds to a question. The wording locates the practice within an edition and its authors. Readers need not confuse interpretation with archaeology.

Sources consulted