Saartjie Baartman

Sarah Baartman
La Belle Hottentot, a 19th-century French print of Baartman
Born	1770s Near Gamtoos River, Eastern Cape, Dutch Cape Colony
Died	29 December 1815 (aged 39–40) Paris, France
Resting place	Vergaderingskop, Hankey, Eastern Cape, South Africa 33°50′14″S 24°53′05″E / 33.8372°S 24.8848°E / -33.8372; 24.8848Coordinates: 33°50′14″S 24°53′05″E / 33.8372°S 24.8848°E / -33.8372; 24.8848
Other names	Hottentot Venus, Saartjie Baartman

Sara "Saartjie" Baartman (before 1790 – 29 December 1815), commonly called Sarah Baartman in English, was the most well known of at least twoKhoikhoi women who, due to their large buttocks (steatopygia), were exhibited as freak show attractions in 19th-century Europe under the name Hottentot Venus—"Hottentot" was the then current name for the Khoi people, now considered an offensive term, and "Venus" referred to the Roman goddess of love.

Sara Baartman, called "Saartjie" (a nickname for Sara), was likely born in 1789 in the Gamtoos valley in the eastern part of the Cape Colony. In 1810, she went to England with her employer, a free black man (a Cape designation for someone of slave descent) called Hendrik Cesars, and William Dunlop, a English doctor who worked at the Cape slave lodge. They sought to show her for money on the London stage. Sara Baartman spent four years on stage in England and Ireland. Early on, her treatment on the Picadilly stage caught the attention of British abolitionists, who argued that her performance was indecent and that she was being forced to perform against her will. Ultimately, the court ruled in favor of her exhibition after Dunlop produced a contract made between himself and Baartman. It is doubtful that this contract was valid: it was probably produced for the purposes of the trial. Cesars left the show and Dunlop continued to display Baartman in country fairs. Baartman also moved to Manchester where she was baptized as Sarah Bartmann. In 1814, after Dunlop's death, a man called Henry Taylor brought Baartman to Paris. He sold her to an animal trainer, S. Reaux, who made her amuse onlookers who frequented the Palais-Royal. Georges Cuvier, founder and professor of comparative anatomy at the Museum of Natural History examined Baartman as he searched for proof of a so-called missing link between animals and human beings. Baartman's body became the foundation for racist science. Baartman lived in poverty, and died in Paris of an undetermined inflammatory disease in December 1815. After her death, Cuvier dissected her body, and displayed her remains. For more than a century and a half, visitors to the Museum of Man in Paris could view her brain, skeleton and genitalia as well as a plaster cast of her body. Her remains were returned to South Africa in 2002 and she was buried in the Eastern Cape on South Africa's Women's Day.