This is my portrait of Hagar, an enslaved woman of Egyptian descent who appears in Chapter 16 of the biblical Book of Genesis. She belonged to the patriarch Abraham and his wife Sarai, the latter of whom had Hagar act as a surrogate mother since she could not conceive a child herself. However, Sarai and Hagar did not get along, causing Hagar to flee into the wilderness. There, a messenger of Yahweh (the biblical God) told her to return to her owners and put up with their abuse, but then bear them a son named Ishmael who would be “a wild ass of a man”. Not my preferred form of divine justice, honestly speaking, but I suppose burdening your owners with an unruly child would be better than nothing.

I don’t know for certain what sort of clothing an enslaved Egyptian person serving Hebrew owners would wear, but here I went with more-or-less Hebrew-style clothing with an Egyptian color palette (blue and gold).