The Flight out of Egypt

This painting has become known as The Flight out of Egypt but Dadd didn't give it a title. He travelled in the Near East from 1842 to 1843, and saw an encampment of Muslim pilgrims near Damascus, which may have been the starting point for this image. The Hajj is the largest annual pilgrimage in the world, and historically Damascus and Cairo were two of the most famous meeting points, from where tens of thousands of Muslims would embark for Mecca. Strangely, Dadd seems to have crammed different histories and cultures of Egypt and the Holy Land into one place.