After losing a fight with Ammon, the father of Lamoni who was king over all the land of Nephi, "fearing he should lose his life, said; If thou [Ammon] wilt spare me I will grant unto thee whatsoever thou wilt ask, even to half of the kingdom" (Alma 20:23). Hugh Nibley asks, Why this old formula "half the kingdom?" Well, you know the game of chess. In English we call it chess, but that's just the first word shah which means "the king." The game is shah mat, as they call it in other languages everywhere, whether it's Russian, German, French, or anything else. Shah mat means "the king is dead," and the whole thing in chess is to checkmate the king. Checkmate means "the king is dead." Mat in all Semitic languages means "dead." When he is checkmated, he may have a whole board full of pieces, but he is beaten if he is checkmated. It doesn't make any difference how many kings, queens, and bishops he has, he has lost. And it's the same thing here; it's to beat the king. If the king has lost then he must lose all. Then his kingdom and his whole army go over to the other side, and they belong to the other king. But to save his life he may compromise. He may not give away his kingdom because he has been anointed and appointed to it as a sacred office. He must keep it. But he must save his life, so he'll have to give you the kingdom. How does he do it? He splits it exactly in half--the halving the kingdom. He gives you half, and he keeps half. He spares his life, he keeps his office, and he gives you legitimate claim to your half. This settles everything. This is the idea of the half. How can the king possibly share it? Well, he can share it only if he halves it. There is a lot of Egyptian lore connected with this--the halving of the kingdom, the red and the white kingdom, and all this sort of thing. [Hugh W. Nibley, Teachings of the Book of Mormon, Semester 2, p. 394]