Despite its reputation as a medieval instrument of torture, there is no evidence of the existence of iron maidens before the 19th century. There are, however, ancient reports of the
Spartan tyrant
Nabis using
a similar device around 200 BCE for extortion and murder. The
Abbasid vizier Ibn al-Zayyat is said to have created a "wooden oven-like chest that had iron spikes" for torture, which would ironically be used during his own imprisonment and execution in 847. Wolfgang Schild, a professor of criminal law, criminal law history, and philosophy of law at the
Bielefeld University, has argued that putative iron maidens were pieced together from
artifacts found in museums to create spectacular objects intended for (commercial) exhibition. Several 19th-century iron maidens are on display in museums around the world, including the
Museum of Us, the
Meiji University Museum, and several
torture museums in Europe.
Possible inspirations The 19th-century iron maidens may have been constructed as a misinterpretation of a medieval
Schandmantel, which was made of wood and metal but without spikes. Inspiration for the iron maiden may also have come from the Carthaginian execution of
Marcus Atilius Regulus as recorded in
Tertullian's "To the Martyrs" (Chapter 4) and
Augustine of Hippo's
The City of God (I.15), in which the
Carthaginians "shut him into a tight wooden box, where he was forced to stand, spiked with the sharpest nails on all sides so that he could not lean in any direction without being pierced," or from
Polybius' account of
Nabis of
Sparta's deadly statue of his wife, the
Iron Apega (earliest form of the device). == Iron maiden of Nuremberg ==