She who is known by the name of Bactrian Princess undoubtedly does not represent a princess, and probably does not come from Bactria either. It would seem rather that this little statue, of which 70 examples are known to exist, represents a "lady of Oxus" of uncertain identity: a high-ranking personality or a deity? All suppositions are permitted. We know only that Oxus was a Central Asian civilization, that it was nourished by input from Mesopotamians and Elamites, and that it prospered between 2300 and 1700 BC. These sculptures, which started to appear in antique shops and in the market in Kabul in the late 1960s, have contributed to widening our knowledge about a fascinating culture that had hitherto remained in the shadows. In this Solo publication, Agnès Benoit, chief curator of the Musée du Louvre's department of Near Eastern Antiquities, endeavors to answer some of the questions raised by these enigmatic figures.