The idol of the Karkaraly district
The stone woman, installed in the northern part of the grove, was "donated" to the Siberian University by the Semipalatinsk Regional Museum. One of the initiators and organizers of the transfer of the stone statue was the head of the Semipalatinsk Regional Museum G. Makovetsky.
It is known that the "stone woman" was found in 1880 in Karkaraly district of the Semipalatinsk region in the Kyzyl-Tas mountains, 120 versts south of the Karkaraly urban settlement. According to the modern administrative division, Karkaralinsk is the center of the district of the same name in the Karaganda region of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
The statue was located within the mound of a small mound, in which, after excavations, only a structure was found, made of “stone slabs, set edgewise and forming a grave” (Tomsk Museums, 2010, p. 107).
The process of transporting the statue to Tomsk began in June 1886, when the office of the Ignatov and Kurbatov shipping company accepted the woman for delivery to Tomsk (Tomsk Museums, 2010, p. 107). However, she entered Tomsk only in 1887.
Being on a business trip in Semipalatinsk V.M. Florinsky had the opportunity to get acquainted with several samples of stone sculptures. One of them, also originating from the Karkaraly district, was similar to the Tomsk specimen.
The finds of stone sculptures in this area made it possible to expand the territory of distribution of this type of monuments. Before V.M. Florinsky, the presence of stone women in the Semipalatinsk region was noted only in the foothills of the Altai, along the upper reaches of the Irtysh. However, the Karkaraly samples indicated that stone sculptures are also found in the northern part of the region, in particular, in the vicinity of the mountains. Karkaralinska (Florinskiy, 1896, p. 42).