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Exodus 2:1-4 (ANIV)
1 Now a man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman, 2 and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. 3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. 4 His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.

DRAWING NOTES:

TIME OF DAY:
Mid morning.

LIGHTING NOTES:
The sun is high in the sky & to the left.

CHARACTERS PRESENT:
Moses (in woven reed basket) with his mother crying as she puts the lid on the little reed boat.
Miriam (Moses’ older sister) watching from further downstream on the river bank, who in turn is being watched by a Great Egret even further downstream!

RESEARCH/ADDITIONAL NOTES:
This is the first Bible Cartoon I have completed in 2014.

If you look closely you will see the loops & ties that Moses’ mother will use to secure the top of the basket to the bottom, sealing the baby Moses safely into a water-tight vessel.

You can just make out the narrow pathway through the reeds Moses’ mother has made to get to the river bank.

Exodus 1:11 informs us that the Egyptian people (at the command of Pharaoh, their king) put slave masters over the Hebrew people to oppress them with forced labour. To reflect this oppression & poverty I have drawn Miriam with a patched brown sackcloth robe, tied around the waist with an old piece of yellow rope.

Plants & animals in this scene.
Blue Egyptian water lily or sacred blue lily (Nymphaea caerulea). This lotus is used to produce perfumes since ancient times. The flowers have pale bluish-white to sky-blue or mauve petals, smoothly changing to a pale yellow in the centre of the flower. The leaves are broadly rounded, 25–40 cm across, with a notch at the leaf stem. The flowers are 10–15 cm in diameter. Its original habitat may have been along the Nile and other locations in East Africa. This species was the dominant lotus in Egyptian art, where it is frequently depicted in connection with scenes of figures apparently dancing or in significant spiritual rites. It can be seen in numerous stone carvings and paintings, including the walls of the famous temple of Karnak.

The many long stemmed plants are Papyrus sedge (also known as paper reed, Indian matting plant & Nile grass, Cyperus papyrus) which provide convenient cover for Moses’ mother as she sends Moses off in his little reed boat down the river Nile.

The white water bird watching the scene (see middle left of this scene) is a Great Egret (Ardea alba) also known as Common Egret, Large Egret or Great White Heron.

I have added various beetles, flies, gnats & other flying insects in the air above the water.