ANCIENT LOCKS: GRECIAN, ROMAN, EGYPTIAN.
Locks and door-fastenings have not, until modern times, been susceptible
of any classified arrangement according to their principles of
construction. They have been too simple to require it, and too little
varied to permit it. That some such fastenings must be employed wherever
doors of any kind are used is sufficiently apparent; and there is a
little (though only a little) information obtainable, which shews the
nature of the fastenings adopted in early times. The bolt, the hasp, the
chain, the bar, the latch, the lock, all were known, in one or other of
their various forms, in those ages which we are accustomed to consider
classical. Travellers, generally speaking, do not descend to locks, or
rather they do not think about them; otherwise they might have collected
much that would have been novel and applicable to the present work; and,
indeed, there is some ground for the assertion, that a notice of the
door-fastenings of all nations would reveal to us something of the
social and domestic habits of various members of the great human family.
Be this as it may, however, we may profitably make a little inquiry into
the locks of ancient times.
In the volumes of Lardner’s _Cyclopædia_ relating to the “Manners and
Customs of the ancient Greeks and Romans,” we do not find any mention of
the kinds of locks used by those nations; but the author, while
describing the houses, says:--“Doors turned anciently upon large pivots
in the centre, let into sockets in the lintel and threshold, so that one
of the sides opened inwards, the other outwards; and Plutarch gives the
following curious reason why persons were to knock and alarm the
porter, viz. lest the visitor entering unawares should surprise the
mistress or daughter of the family busy or undressed, or servants under
correction, or the maids quarreling.” As the visitors had thus the power
(if permitted so to do) to open the outer door of a house, it would
appear that very little in the nature of a lock was employed under
ordinary circumstances, unless indeed it were a mere latch. In respect
to Roman houses it is stated, that “the doors revolved upon pivots,
which worked in a socket below, and were fastened by bolts which hung
from chains.” There is no mention of locks here. Mr. St. John, in his
work on the same subject, says: “The street-door of a Grecian house,
usually, when single, opened outwards; but when there were folding-doors
they opened inwards, as with us. In the former case it was customary,
when any one happened to be going forth, to knock, or call, or ring a
bell, in order to warn passengers to make way.” After describing the
various kinds of wood of which the doors were made, he proceeds: “The
doors at first were fastened by long bars passing into the wall on both
sides; and by degrees smaller bolts, hasps, latches, and locks and keys,
succeeded. For example, the outer door of the thalamos in Homer was
secured by a silver hasp, and a leathern thong passed round the handle,
and tied, perhaps, in a curious knot.”
Mr. Yates, in a learned article on this subject in Smith’s _Dictionary
of Greek and Roman Antiquities_, collects numerous details scattered
through various early writers. We will string together a few of these
details, so far as they have any relation to the fastenings of doors.
The outer door of a Roman house was generally called _janua_; whereas
the inner doors were called _ostia_. The doorway, when complete,
consisted of four indispensable parts--the threshold or sill, the
lintel, and the two jambs. The threshold, on which the feet trod, was
often regarded with a kind of superstitious reverence; the lintel, which
crossed the doorway at the top, having a considerable superincumbent
weight to bear, was usually made of one piece of timber or stone of
great strength; the jambs, or side uprights, were also made in one
piece each. The doorway, in every building of the least importance,
contained two doors folding together; even the internal doors had their
bivalve construction. But in every case each of the two valves was wide
enough to allow persons to pass through without opening the other; in
some cases even each valve was double, so as to fold like our
window-shutters. These doors, or valves, were not hinged to the
side-posts, as with us, but were, as has already been stated, pivoted to
the lintel above and the threshold below. The fastening usually
consisted of a bolt placed at the base of each valve or half-door, so as
to admit of being pushed into a socket made in the sill to receive it.
The doorways in some of the houses at Pompeii still shew two holes in
the sill, corresponding to the bolts in the two valves. At night, the
front door of the house was further secured by means of a wooden and
sometimes an iron bar placed across it, and inserted into sockets on
each side of the doorway; hence it was necessary to remove the bar in
order to open the door. Chamber-doors were often secured in the same
manner. In the _Odyssey_ there is mention of a contrivance (adverted to
by Mr. St. John) for bolting or unbolting a door from the outside; it
consisted of a leather thong inserted through a hole in the door, and by
means of a loop, ring, or hook, capable of taking hold of the bolt so as
to move it in the manner required. We have here evidently the elements
of a more complete mechanism; for the bolt was a rude lock in the same
degree that the thong was a rude key. That the Romans afterwards had
real locks and keys is clear; for the keys found at Herculaneum and
Pompeii, and those attached to rings, prove that a kind of warded lock
must have been well known.[2] There are the remains of a tomb at
Pompeii, the door of which is made of a single piece of marble,
including the pivots, which were encased in bronze, and turned in
sockets of the same metal; it is three feet high, two feet nine inches
wide, and four and a quarter inches thick; it is cut in front to
resemble panels, and thus approaches nearer in appearance to a modern
wooden door; and it was fastened by some kind of lock, traces of which
still remain.
[2] An examination of the Roman keys in the British Museum
sufficiently attests this fact.
The same facts frequently become more clear when described in different
words by different writers. We shall make use of this circumstance. Mr.
Donaldson, in his _Essay on Ancient Doorways_, presents us with details
which illustrate many of the foregoing remarks. “Homer describes the
treasures and other valuable objects (mentioned in the _Odyssey_) as
being kept in the citadel, secured merely by a cord intricately knotted.
This, of course, was soon found to be a very insufficient protection,
and therefore a wooden bar was adopted inside the doors of houses, to
which it was attached by an iron latch, fastened or removed by a key
adapted to it; this key was easily applied from within; but in order to
get at it from without, a large hole was made in the door, allowing the
introduction of the hand, so as to reach the latch and apply the key.
The lock called the Lacedæmonian, much celebrated by ancient writers,
was invented subsequently; it was especially fitted for the inner
chambers of houses, the bar fastenings continuing to be employed for
closing the outer doors of dwellings and the entrance-gates to cities.
The Lacedæmonian lock did not require a hole to be made in the door, for
it consisted of a bolt placed on that side of the entrance-door which
opened, and on the inside of a chamber-door. When a person who was
outside wished to enter, it was necessary for him to insert the key in a
little hole and to raise the bolt; and in time this species of fastening
was improved by the insertion of the bolt in an iron frame or rim
permanently attached to the door by a chain, and fastening the door by
the insertion of the hasp, through the eye of which was forced the bolt
inside the lock by applying the key.” After quoting a Latin sentence
from Varro in elucidation of his subject, Mr. Donaldson proceeds to
observe, that for the most part the locks of the ancients were different
in principle from those of modern days, not being inserted or mortised
into the doors, nor even attached except by a chain; they were, in fact,
padlocks.
One of the passages in the _Odyssey_ alluding to the primitive mode of
fastening the valves or folding-doors of a house runs thus:--
“Whilst to his couch himself the prince addressed,
The duteous nurse received the purple vest:
The purple vest with decent care disposed,
The silver ring she pulled, the door reclosed;
The bolt, obedient to the silken cord,
To the strong staple’s inmost depth restored,
Secured the valves.”
Most of the other great nations of antiquity resembled either the
Egyptians or the Greeks and Romans, more or less closely, in their
domestic and domiciliary arrangements; or, at any rate, so far as such
humble matters as locks and keys are concerned, we need not seek far
from those nations for examples. The Nineveh and other Assyrian
explorations have, however, revealed many curious and unexpected facts;
from the temples and the palaces we may by and by penetrate into the
houses and rooms of the citizens sufficiently to know how their doors
were fastened. In the mean time ancient Egypt awaits our notice.
Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson, in his _Manners and Customs of the Ancient
Egyptians_, gives the following information concerning the doors and
door-fastenings of that remarkable people, on the authority of models,
sculptures, and paintings, still existing. The doors were frequently
stained so as to imitate foreign and rare woods. They were either of one
or two valves, turning on pieces of metal, and were secured within by a
bar or by bolts. Some of these bronze pins have been discovered in the
tombs of Thebes; they were fastened to the wood with nails of the same
metal, the round heads of which served also as ornaments. In the stone
lintels and floors behind the thresholds of the tombs and temples are
still frequently to be seen the holes in which the pivot-pins turned, as
well as those of the bolts and bars, and the recess for receiving the
opened valves. The folding-doors had bolts in the centre, sometimes
above as well as below; a bar was placed across from one wall to the
other.
In many of the ancient Egyptian doors there were wooden locks fixed so
as to fasten across the centre at the junction where the two folds of
the door met. It is difficult, by mere inspection of the bas-reliefs and
paintings, to decide whether these locks were opened by a key, or were
merely drawn backwards and forwards like a bolt; but if they were really
locks, it is probable that they were on the same principle as the
Egyptian lock still in use. For greater security, these modern locks are
occasionally sealed with a mass of clay; and there is satisfactory
evidence that the same custom was frequently observed among the ancient
inhabitants of that country. Sir J. G. Wilkinson gives a representation
of an iron key, now in his possession, which he procured among the tombs
at Thebes, and which looks very much like a modern burglar’s picklock.
In relation to keys generally, and after mentioning the use of bronze
for their manufacture, he says: “At a later period, when iron came into
general use, keys were made of that metal, and consisted of a straight
shank about five inches in length, and a bar at right angles with it, on
which were three or more projecting teeth. The ring at the upper
extremity was intended for the same purpose as that of our modern keys;
but we are ignorant of the exact time when they were brought into use;
and the first invention of locks distinct from both is equally
uncertain; nor do I know of any positive mention of a key, which, like
our own, could be taken out of the lock, previous to the year 1336
before our era; and this is stated to have been used to fasten the door
of the summer parlour of Eglon, the king of Moab. The description here
adverted to is that contained in Judges iii. 23-25: ‘Ehud went forth
through the porch, and shut the doors of the parlour upon him, and
locked them ... his servants ... took a key, and opened them.’”
The curious and ingenious wooden lock of ancient Egypt is still in use
in Egypt and Turkey. In Eton’s _Survey of the Turkish Empire_, published
towards the close of the last century, the locks then and there in use
are thus described: “Nothing can be more clumsy than the door-locks in
Turkey; but their mechanism to prevent picking is admirable. It is a
curious thing to see wooden locks upon iron doors, particularly in Asia,
and on their caravanserais and other great buildings, as well as upon
house-doors. The key goes into the back part of the bolt, and is
composed of a square stick with five or six iron or wooden pins, about
half an inch long, towards the end of it, placed at irregular distances,
and answering to holes in the upper part of the bolt, which is pierced
with a square hole to receive the key. The key being put in as far as it
will go, is then lifted up; and the pins, entering the corresponding
holes, raise other pins which had dropped into these holes from the part
of the lock immediately above, and which have heads to prevent them
falling lower than is necessary. The bolt, being thus freed from the
upper pins, is drawn back by means of the key; the key is then lowered,
and may be drawn out of the bolt. To lock it again, the bolt is only
pushed in, and the upper pins fall into the holes in the bolt by their
own weight.” Mr. Eton, probably seeing how well the tumbler-principle is
here understood, says: “This idea might be improved on; but the Turks
never think of improving.” The locks on the doors of modern houses in
Cairo seem to be of this long-established form, except where iron locks
have been imported from Europe.
A letter was inserted in the _Journal of Design_ for July 1850 from Mr.
W. C. Trevelyan; in which, after adverting to the Egyptian lock, he
says: “It is remarkable that the locks which have been in use in the
Faröe Islands, probably for centuries, are identical in their
construction with the Egyptian. They are, lock and key, in all their
parts made of _wood_; of which material, if I mistake not, they have
also been found in Egyptian catacombs; and so identical with the
Faröese in structure and appearance, that it would not be easy to
distinguish one from the other.”
[Illustration: fig. 1.]
[Illustration: fig. 2.]
[Illustration: fig. 3.]
[Illustration: fig. 4.]
The construction of this remarkable Egyptian or pin-lock will be
understood from the accompanying engravings. The quadrangular portion,
_a a_ fig. 1, is the case of the lock, screwed or otherwise fastened to
the door, having a wooden bolt, _b b_, passing horizontally through a
cavity in it. In the part of the case above the bolt are several small
cells containing headed pins, arranged in any desired form; and in the
top of the bolt itself are an equal number of holes similarly arranged.
The effect of this arrangement is such that, when brought into the right
positions, the lower ends of the headed pins drop into the corresponding
holes in the bolt, thereby fastening the bolt in the lock-case. A large
hollow, or cavity, is made at the exposed end of the bolt, the cavity
extending as far as and beyond the holes occupied by the pins. The key
consists of a piece of wood (shewn in two positions, figs. 3 and 4,)
having pins arranged like those in the lock, and projecting upwards just
to a sufficient distance to reach the upper surface of the bolt. This
being the arrangement, whenever the key is introduced and pressed
upwards, its pins exactly fill the holes in the bolt, and by so doing
dislodge those which had fallen from the upper part of the case. The
bolt may, under these circumstances, be withdrawn (as shewn in fig. 2),
leaving the headed pins elevated in their cells, instead of occupying
the position shewn by the dotted lines in fig. 1. The cavity in the bolt
must of course be high enough to receive the thickness of the key, and
also the length of the pins protruding from the key.
This primitive lock comprises many of the best features of the tumbler
or lever-locks of later days, as will be seen in a future chapter. There
will also be opportunities of shewing how the pin-action has been
applied in other ways in some of the modern locks.