Belts and Pins as Gendered Elements of Clothing in Third and Second millennia Mesopotamia

International audienceCuneiform texts include many words linked to textile terminology which highlight varieties of materials, weaving techniques and regional peculiarities. During the third millennium and the first half of the second millennia BCE, forms of clothing were rather simple in the Near East, including tunics and wrap around garments for both men and women. Texts from this period do not make clear gender distinctions, presumably because tailored garments are still rare and reserved to the elite. The iconography, often subject to conventions in representations, gives an idea of the shape of clothing at different times. But the two corpus, texts and images, do not necessarily match. Using both textual and visual evidences for the third and first half of the second millennium BCE, this chapter intends to show that even if men and women used to wear the same types of clothes, they arranged their garments around their body differently, using distinctive elements to fix them: belts for men and pins for women