Cheops is a game of intellectual skill, demanding an alert mind and a high order of concentration. It is played throughout the Old Imperium, although in some remote parts it has few devotees. While the game's origins are lost in the mist of antiquity, the earliest reference to Cheops is found in a fragment of the poet Goarsun, who lived only two generations after the Butlerian Jihad. Partial descriptions of the game exist from the third millennium, and a picto-disc from the eighth millennium shows a game in progress in the background of a diplomatic conference, perhaps a Landsraad meeting with Emperor Istaivan II (r. 7711-7746), an aficionado of the game and no mean player himself, according to contemporaries.