Central Asian Caravan Woman Rousing her Camel While Nursing

A Western Asiatic woman, who is nursing a baby at her bare left breast, sits astride a kneeling Bactrian camel between its two humps. The plump-proportioned woman has distinctive Turkic facial features, modeled full cheeks, sunken small eyes, hooked nose, and pout lips. She wears the high cap, pants, and boots convenient for nomadic life. She raises her right hand as if pulling the camel's rein, and curves her left fist as if to grasp the reins, even while she holds the baby in her left arm. The suckling baby wears split pants that charmingly expose its naked bottom. The open-mouthed camel is modeled with fur on its head, under its arched neck, on its humps, and around its front legs. It wears a fringed saddle blanket with criss-cross patterns, cut to let the humps through. The heavy load on the sides of its humps consists of a fringed blanket covering hinged slates of wood, under which bulky rolled-up blankets or tent equipment are suspended by two poles fastened by ropes. The load is tightened by painted and incised girdles crossing the neck and body of the camel. The group of figures is painted in ochre, red, black, and orange.