Ssehura, more known by her European given name Sarah Baartman (; 1789– 29 December 1815), also spelt Sara, sometimes in the diminutive form Saartje (), or Saartjie, and Bartman, Bartmann, was a Khoikhoi woman who was exhibited as a freak show attraction in 19th-century Europe under the name Hottentot Venus, a name which was later attributed to at least one other woman similarly exhibited. The women were exhibited for their steatopygic body type uncommon in Western Europe which not only was perceived as a curiosity at that time, but became subject of scientific interest as well as of erotic projection. "Venus" is sometimes used to designate representations of the female body in arts and cultural anthropology, referring to the Roman goddess of love and fertility. "Hottentot" was the colonial-era term for the indigenous Khoikhoi people of southwestern Africa, now usually considered an offensive term. The Sarah Baartman story is often regarded as the epitome of racist colonial exploitation, and of the commodification of the dehumanization of black people. Life Early life in the Cape Colony Ssehura was born to a Khoekhoe family in the vicinity of the Camdeboo in what is now the Eastern Cape of South Africa (then the Dutch Cape Colony; a British colony by the time she was an adult). Saartjie is the diminutive form of Sarah, the name given to her by europeans; in Cape Dutch the use of the diminutive form commonly indicated familiarity, endearment or contempt. Her surname has also been spelt Bartman and Bartmann. She was an infant when her mother died and her father was later killed by Bushmen (San people) while driving cattle. Baartman spent her childhood and teenage years on Dutch European farms. She went through puberty rites, and kept the small tortoise shell necklace, most likely given to her by her mother, until her death in France. In the 1790s, a free black (a designation for individuals of enslaved descent) trader named Peter Cesars (also recorded as Caesar) met her and encouraged her to move to Cape Town. Records do not show whether she was made to leave, went willingly, or was sent by her family to Cesars. She lived in Cape Town for at least two years working in households as a washerwoman and a nursemaid, first for Peter Cesars, then in the house of a Dutch man in Cape Town. She finally moved to be a wet-nurse