 Well, as you know, debates about gender identity of anthropomorphic figures are always among the most debated. When discussing how certain objects have to be interpreted. Some of these debates initiated at the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century, and they may help us to understand how certain ideals of femininity and masculinity were, and in most cases still are, constructed. In this communication I will share with you some elements of these debates, developed in the framework of ancient medieval studies in the first decades of the 20th century. More specifically, I will concentrate on the way the shape of the chest and the presence of more or less prominent breasts, widely considered a secondary sexual attribute signaling femininity, wherein they are predicted in some scholarly debates. I will also consider the way the presence or absence of body hair, considered also as a secondary sexual attribute, but in this case signaling masculinity, was also influencing these debates. These cases studies chosen to illustrate this topic are the images you can see in this slide. So first is the leaf from the 13th century BC, a Hittite leaf from Hatusha, and then at the other side, a figurine, a foundation figurine, or a group of foundation figurines from the end of the third millennium BC, found at Nipur in ancient Mesopotamia. At the end of the communication I will conclude with some thoughts about the way the two apparently contradictory, but from my point of view, clearly complementary femininity models were operating about 100 years ago when these interpretations of the materials were first launched and discussed. Let me begin then with this first case study. The first case study is about this Hittite relief. This Hittite relief is now known as the Kings Gate at the upper side of Hatusha, the ancient capital city of the Hittites, and is known as the Kings Gate because this relief has been interpreted for many, many years as a king. Nowadays because of the helmet is interpreted as a god. But the first interpretation was not a king, not a god, but a woman, and more specifically a warrior woman that is an amazon, and that's the that's the beginning of this communication. So a figurine that nowadays is interpreted as a male body anyway, god or king, but was first interpreted as a female body for several reasons. This was another thing here you have maybe the first photograph I found of this relief from 1907 when it was enacted by Otto Buchstein, who was the archaeologist at the time working by the Deutsche Archaeologisches Institut, and here you have a picture with this with the nephew of Otto Buchstein, this Eric Buchstein. The first one launching the hypothesis of the amazon, so the identification of a woman, was precisely a woman, a woman who was Isabel Francis, the one you have in this in this red square there. She was teacher of art and archaeology in the American College for Girls at that time, and I think that is not by a sad that a woman working in a woman's environment was launching this hypothesis of the amazon. Isabel Francis Dot was launching this hypothesis when she went to the to the site in Kratusha, and indeed she was a privileged one because few people was just allowed let's see to go there and had the opportunity to go there, but she was living in Constantinopla, so was really close one place to the other. In 1909 it was organized an expedition to the site and she was joining this expedition. Here you can see some images of the car that was organized for this expedition, and you can see also an image that is interesting because this image shows this covering and uncovering with stones that seemed that they were doing every time a group of tourists who was arriving to the site to make more impressive this uncovering of the relief. What do we have to say that she launched this hypothesis of the amazon because she was teacher of art and archaeology, but she was not properly an scholar let's say, so she was not in the scholarly debates herself, but we have some correspondence she was maintaining with Archival Henry says, I'm going to talk about this in a while, and we also have this National Geographic Magazine article here you have with her stage, I mean this article in 1910 she was publishing the hypothesis as you can read, may you read, here the figure of the amazon on the eastern gate, so here she was proposing this first identification. Now concentrating on these correspondence, Archival Henry says with a scholar then working at Oxford, he was a sociologist, biblical scholar and so on, and he was an expert, many people was contacting just to know what was going on with many many matters, and at that time Dodd was contacting Zeiss to explain that she had this hypothesis and to know if it was plausible or not, and here you have a fragment of the first letter she said to Zeiss, let me read this excerpt for you, the relief seemed unmistakingly a woman and all the native people around called it a woman, it is a queen perhaps certainly a woman warrior, an amazon, all the woman ship is so delicate and fine that it is so interesting end of quote, so here is interesting not only that she was interpreting the relief as a woman, but she says the native people, the local people is interpreting it as a woman, but what is even more interesting is that she was sending a letter and also this great drawing, I mean that is, let's say the gem, the hidden gem of these correspondence, because this drawing was the one circulated in most of the papers at that time, so many people had no access to the picture, to the photograph, that had access to this drawing, and here you can see also in reality part of conservation the photograph you have seen in the National Geographic magazine, if we have a look, if we compare this drawing with the current images of the relief, so these are the images of the original relief, let's say now at the Museum of Angara, you can see some differences, some clear differences that are of course potentiating the hypothesis of the amazon and of the woman, first of all the legs, maybe the legs are the most clear difference, but then the most significant for us, the one I want to concentrate on, is the upper part of the body, the chest, and here you can see two important things, the first there in the drawing you see just one breast, we don't see the other one, so it does not mean that there is no breast, but she is not drawing the second breast, it's just hidden by the weapon, but then the image is so clear that we have two breasts and even we have this clear nipple behind the weapon, as you know so this having one breast or two breasts of course reinforces the hypothesis of the amazon, and then there is another issue that is really important, there you see a kind of t-shirt, armor, something like that, covering the body with these short sleeves, but there here you see no short sleeves, and I don't know if you can maybe appreciate in this last image, but all this is body hair covering the whole torso but also the arms, but then of course body hair and breasts, let's say that in her mind were not compatible and she had to choose and decided to choose of course for breast as an important thing, only one breast and of course no body hair to emphasize the hypothesis of the woman and the amazon, but as I told you the important issue is that well she was proposing this, she was not in the scholarly debate, but as she was corresponding with Seis, Seis was the one sharing this information and launching this information to these scholar circles, Seis was publishing a paper in 1910 and in this paper he's publishing almost the whole letter he sent in 1909 to him, including the drawing and the photograph, so he published everything, what happened that from that moment what was circulating was Seis paper, of course he was mentioning dot and everyone or some scholars were also mentioning dot in their articles, but they were mentioning dot through Seis, so it was something that came with a principle of authority, let's say it was not an unknown lady in an American college for girls launching a hypothesis, but that recognized a scholar like Seis circulating this hypothesis saying I gave credence to this possibility, so from that moment there we have for example this other article by Reina also reproducing the drawing, reproducing in this case the drawing thanks to the first publication by Seis, so not reproducing the original, but reproducing just reproducing the one published before and many scholars were saying it makes sense, so the Greek sources are mentioning Amazons at that area, it makes sense that finally we have an Amazon represented in this one, only one scholar that was Otto Puchstein was saying well maybe it makes no sense, remember he was the only one who saw the original, who saw the relief, he was the archaeologist, the other ones were relying on Seis words, on dots words, drawing and photograph, and he who was just having a look on the original said I think that is just a young man, because well he says here in this quotation I am not as competent in gender issues as Miss Dot should say, but I think that is just a young man and that there is no full jacket armor or something like that, it's just body hair, so I don't think that the Amazon hypothesis is working that much, let's move on now to the second case study and we develop it much short shortly, but I think that it's important to see two different case studies to see that this debate was not an isolated debate, was not something just related to this delay, but also to other materials. Here what you have are foundation figurines from the end of the third millennium BCE, in this case our foundation figurines found at Nippur settlement in the southern part of this foundation, the deposits were found a bit before the relief was found, so the first foundation deposits were found 1888-1890 and the last ones 1950s, in different campaigns held by the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania, and they were found two different kinds of figurines in these foundation deposits, one kind of figurine was the peg shape figurine, the one you can see here representing the king Shulgi, one of the kings of the third dynasty of the world, and the other ones were representing the king Urnana, the father of king Shulgi, you're going to see this again at that time, both of them were just with this position carrying this basket on the head and the shape of the torso was really similar, but then the difference was these ones were appreciate, the other ones were wearing kind of scared something like that, and some of them in this case and in the other were wearing also an inscription in the upper part. At the beginning, as you can see here, the first publications of these figurines, of these Shulgi figurines, were identifying them as Portes de Corbeille, so they were identifying them as female slaves carrying this basket on the head, and so here what was used, let's say we can define these figurines as females, was the absence of body hair, the head completely shaven, also the fact that they were carrying this basket on the head, and finally, of course, the presence of these slightly visible breasts, okay, so all this was taken as a warranty for that. In the case of the other figurines, these are the other figurines, the Urnana figurines, where you can see that the shape of the upper part of the body is just the same, here you have a quotation from 1931 in one of the first big analyses of these foundation figurines, where, and I quote, Bamburen was saying, the figurine represents a woman whose head is set on a well-rounded neck, the body is slender, and she raises her arms in a graceful curve so that both hands steady the basket resting on a cushion or pad upon her shaven head, her long fingers with carefully marked nails spread across the top of the basket, end of call. So clearly here, she's highlighting everything considered as feminine, even the nails, so if you can see nails in these figurines, that's like a miracle, and I have seen the figurines really close by, and there are no nails, and even no delicate nails, of course. After a while, this hypothesis, like in the previous case, was questioned, but in this case, after a while means 50 years, almost 50 years, a bit more than the other one. So the other one was a question from the very beginning, only by the first archaeologist, and it took about 20 years to overcome the hypothesis. In this case, it took about 50 years, and then what nowadays is agreed is that there is the king, is a representation of the king carrying a basket on the head. But what is surprising is that it was something that was also clear from the beginning for the inscription you have seen before. The inscriptions are saying, I am the king, so it's not a conclusion. I am the king, I am the builder, I am the one constructing this temple. It's not that strange, and it's not that the inscriptions were not translated from the very beginning. They were translated, and carton really translated from the beginning and correctly translated. But then suppose that, well, even if the figurine was saying, I am the king, this breast, and carrying the basket and a slave, something like that could not be the king. But here I also wanted to show you this other image, the image you see here, when I say you're from the 50s, everyone is saying it's the king, so clearly it's not a female. Here you can see a picture taken in 2014, before the Rashat is just a museum in Berlin, before the renovation, where you can read Cork Triggering. So, again, identifying the figurine as a female carrying the basket. So these kind of hypotheses are over combat resistant, let's say, to sum up, to come to the beginning. Let me first summarize what happened here in the two cases studies. What we have is a first identification of female bodies, subsequent identification as male bodies. Then in the case of the heat I believe, what is taken to say they are females are the breast, or breast, in this case significant, one or two, misinterpretation of body hair, interpreted as clothing or something like that, and before your attitude. So an Amazon, but nowadays a king or god. In the case of the figurines, again the breasts, the absence of body hair, and in this case the servile attitude, so a female basket career, but nowadays identified as a king. I think that both of them helped us to understand that what was going on at the beginning of the 20th century was a certain construction of femininity, with these two apparently contradictory models, two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, the exception, the Amazon, of course, this powerful woman, the warrior woman, as an exceptional woman. But then we have the rule, basket careers as ordinary servile women, so both of them are just reinforcing one the other. Thanks for your attention.