Several 19th-century iron maidens are on display in museums around the world, including the San Diego Museum of Man, the Meiji University Museum, and several torture museums in Europe. 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. 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. There are, however, ancient reports of the Spartan tyrant Nabis using a similar device around 200 B.C.
Despite its reputation as a medieval instrument of torture, there is no evidence of the existence of iron maidens before the 19th century.
