[AdmiralAsshat]

I, too, initially thought the 'horse' piece was a person with cartoonish eyes similar to the Lewis chessmen:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_chessmen#/media/File:Lew...

[joshuaheard]

Looking at some of the links to other finds, it looks like only one of the players' pieces has the "eyes". I wonder if that is an insignia to differentiate the players since I don't see a color difference.