The Tarot's Egyptian Origin Story
Court de Gébelin asserted the Egyptian origin in 1781 without evidence. Michael Dummett's 1980 history documented the actual record: a fifteenth-century Italian trick-taking card game. Divination with tarot is recorded only from the eighteenth century, and the Comte de Mellet's essay in that same 1781 volume first linked the cards to fortune-telling in print.
Antoine Court de Gébelin, Le Monde primitif, vol. VIII (1781), with the Comte de Mellet's essay; Michael Dummett, The Game of Tarot (1980); Decker, Depaulis & Dummett, A Wicked Pack of Cards (1996)
The claim that tarot descends from an ancient Egyptian priestly book, first asserted in 1781.