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The chair is of extreme antiquity, although for many centuries and certainly for thousands of years it was an article of state and dignity rather than an article of ordinary use. “The chair” is still extensively used as the emblem of authority in the House of Commons and in public meetings. It was not, in fact, until the 16th century that it became common anywhere. The chest, the bench and the stool were awaiting then the ordinary seats of everyday life, and the number of chairs which have survived from an earlier date is exceedingly limited; most of such examples are of ecclesiastical or seigneurial origin. Our knowledge of the chairs of remote antiquity is derived almost entirely from monuments, sculpture and paintings. A few definite examples exist in the British Museum, in the Egyptian museum at Cairo, and elsewhere.
Egyptian chairs
In ancient Egypt chairs appear to have been of great richness and splendour. Fashioned of ebony and- ivory, or of carved and gilded wood, they were enclosed with costly materials and supported upon representations of the legs of beasts or the figures of captives. An arm-chair in fine preservation found in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings is astonishingly similar, even in small details, to that "Empire" style which followed Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt. The first monuments of Nineveh represent a chair without a back but with attractively carved legs ending in lions’ claws or bulls’ hoofs. Others are supported by figures in the nature of caryatides or by animals.