Muazzez İlmiye Çığ was a Turkish archaeologist, sumerologist, assyriologist, writer and supercentenarian who specialised in the study of Hittites and Sumerian civilization. She stirred controversy in the Muslim world and received worldwide media coverage in 2006 with her assertion, outlined in her book from the previous year, that the headscarf worn by Muslim women did not originate in the Muslim world, but was purportedly worn five thousand years earlier by Sumerian priestesses as a means of initiating young men into sex.









