The beginning.
Those cards, which we got used to from childhood, came to us in the early 17th century through Poland and Germany from France. The "Russian deck" of 36 cards is a cut (i.e. starting with sixes) 54 card "French deck".
Approximately in 15-16 centuries, the French deck has completely developed in a habitual kind to us and since then practically did not vary. Changes of the last time are the appearance in 1830 of a symmetrical figure (earlier card figures were drawn in full height), rounded corners, the appearance of small drawings-indexes in the corners of the map (in 1864 in America they were patented by Saladi).
In the middle of the 15th century, however, the maps came to France from Italy, where they had their card deck with unusual suits (see below for suits), slightly different from region to region (62 maps from Bologna, 78 in Venice, 98 in Florence). The peculiarity of such maps was 21 trump cards - "Senior Arkans". This is how the Tarot cards appeared, which were playing until the 18th century, and only then were they used by the occultists).
The Italian maps belong to the so-called "Latin" (Spanish, Portuguese) - these are the first European maps imported to the Apennines in the late 14th century by crusaders from the East.
The first written mention of playing cards in Europe is a 1367 decree banning card games in the city of Bern. In 1392, Jacques Gringonner, the jester of the mentally ill French king Charles VI, drew a card deck to entertain his master. That deck was different from the modern one - it had only 32 cards (no ladies).
Further history of cards is lost in centuries. There are several versions of their origin.
One of them is the borrowing of a card game from Persia through India. It is in the Persian sources that there is the earliest mention of this game. In the "Chronicles of Egypt and Syria" there is a reference to what to know at court played the game "Kanjifah", using cards of 8 suits of 12 cards. But under the influence of Muslims already in the middle of the 17th century, this game was forgotten.
In India, however, the cards have taken root, the local deck was called a ganja. This word was first mentioned in the diary of Emperor Babur in 1527, where he writes that he sent the deck to his friend.
Indian round playing cards depicted the figure of four-armed Shiva, who held the cup, sword, coin and rod. It is believed that these symbols of the four Indian estates and gave rise to the suits of the "Latin deck".
Another popular version is the Turkic one. In the 12th-13th centuries, Egyptian mameluke played a deck of 52 cards with advantages from 1 to 10, which had four suits (swords, clubs, bowls and coins), "Malik" (Emir - the king) and two of his assistants - "naib Malik" and "Tani naib". This is very similar to the "Latin deck", also initially there were no ladies, and there were kings, jacks and gentlemen. Only clubs became ceremonial sticks (or batons) in Europe. And the word "naib", "assistant", became the name of the card game.
In 1939, L.A. Meyer discovered an incomplete deck of mameluke cards in the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul.
There is a version that I think is just an attempt to hoax that the cards came to us from Egypt. It was first published in 1785 by the French occultist Etteil. Allegedly Egyptian maps are 78 gold plates on which priests have written down all their knowledge. 56 of them - the "Junior Arcana" - became ordinary playing cards, and with 22 "Senior Arcana" they made a deck of Tarot used for fortune-telling. But scientists have not found any archaeological evidence of this version.
One more version which too does not cause at me that card game was shown in 12 century in China. But although there were drawn paper pictures with different images of flowers and birds, somewhat resembling cards, but the rules of the game in them are similar, rather, to the dominoes.