Tarot & Card Games
The oldest surviving tarot is the Visconti-Sforza Tarot. Researchers estimate it was made around 1442–47 for a Milanese noble family — a clue being that the design on the coin cards matches a gold coin minted in 1442 and discontinued in 1447. At the time it was called trionfi, meaning trumps — that is, a trick-taking game with trump cards. There is another naming story worth telling here. The Tarot de Marseille was not born in Marseille. Cards from northern Italy reached southern France after the 1499 French invasion of Milan, and card makers in Marseille settled the design in the 17th century. And the name Tarot de Marseille itself was given in 1856 by the French card historian Romain Merlin. This is a clean example of something this map keeps writing — the name comes from outside, and later.
The myth, corrected
Tarot is a picture of esoteric knowledge passed down from ancient Egypt
This story has no basis in the historical record. It was Antoine Court de Gébelin, in the late 18th century, who first proposed it — a guess that fit the Egyptomania fashionable at the time. The actual tarot was born in 15th-century northern Italy as the equipment for a trick-taking game called tarocchi. It began to be used for divination in the 18th century — from 1783, Etteilla (born Jean-Baptiste Alliette) built a system of interpretation and became the first professional card reader to make a living from it. For roughly three hundred years, these cards were just a game.