From Ancient Wooden Rods to the Hotel Keycard
To understand the history of the key, you must understand the evolution of the lock. One of the most sophisticated locks used in the ancient world was found in 1842 at Khorsabad—in what’s now Iraq—at the palace of the Assyrian king Sargon II, who ruled just before 700 B.C. As the reproduction at left shows, the door opener would use a large, pronged wooden key to lift a series of movable pin tumblers into a position that allowed the wooden bolt to slide open. Although the key shown here looks unfamiliar—more like a rake or a comb than what we’re used to—the locking mechanism is stunningly similar to the ones we use today, most of which also rely on sliding tumblers into place. Although this relatively secure mechanism soon spread from Assyria to Egypt and across the ancient world, it eventually fell out of favor in the West, and wasn’t revived until the 1800s.
In Ancient Rome, having keys—or anything worth locking up—was uncommon. So the key was as much a status symbol as a security device. Affluent Romans often kept their valuables in secure boxes within their households, and wore the keys as rings on their fingers. The practice had two benefits: It kept the key handy at all times, while signaling that the wearer was wealthy and important enough to have money and jewelry worth securing.
During the next 1,500 years or so in Europe, the ornamentation of keys evolved, but the locking mechanism didn’t change much. In the medieval period, keys were more commonly made of iron than bronze, but they retained both their practical and symbolic purposes: securing valuables and showing that you were important enough to have valuables to secure. One way to convey your significance in this period? By carrying a really big key.
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