Supposedly, it was the Middle Easterners who invented the first chest with a lid before their invention was adopted by the Ancient Greeks and Romans. After that, the Romans invented the lararium which is a distant relative of the modern wardrobe. It was a niche in the wall covered with doors. In a lararium, they kept not food or clothes but rather, sacred objects which included statues of gods, the dolls of girls who got married, or the locks of hair from young men who completed a rite of passage into manhood.