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This first-century B.C.E. terracotta from Myrina on the Isle of Lemnos, Greece, is one of several portraying women in ordinary activities, including even something as mundane as using a toilet. Very rarely is a man depicted, and when one appears it is usually in connection with a woman: kissing, cuddling and playing games.

This woman on a donkey is reminiscent of the common artistic portrayal of Mary riding into Bethlehem, a tradition that does not appear in the New Testament, but rather in the apocryphal Protoevangelium of James, which dates c. 145 C.E.

This ancient pre-Madonna is in the Louvre in Paris.