In the late 18th and 19th centuries, a powerful story took hold: Tarot was said to be a remnant of ancient Egyptian wisdom — a portable Book of Thoth encoded in pictures. It was romantic, mysterious, and captivating. It was also, almost certainly, a myth.
The idea didn’t come from medieval card makers. It emerged when scholars and occult enthusiasts began projecting Egypt’s aura of antiquity onto the cards. Writers like Antoine Court de Gébelin and the cartomancer Etteilla popularized the claim, arguing that Tarot’s imagery preserved secret priestly knowledge. Historical evidence, however, points clearly to a European origin: a card game born in Italy and shaped by French printing traditions.
Yet the myth mattered. By reframing Tarot as a vessel of ancient knowledge, it invited new ways to read the cards — not just as gaming pieces, but as a symbolic system. Over the 19th century this view seeded the rise of occult correspondences: astrology, Kabbalah, elemental attributions, and numerology layered onto the trumps, courts and pips.
Whether or not Egypt lies at Tarot’s origin, the Egyptian thesis reshaped its destiny. It transformed Tarot from pastime to pathway — a framework for esoteric study that still influences readers and deck creators today.