Executed at Gizeh in April/May 1854 during Hunt's first visit to the East, the drawing probably shows one of the fellahin children who took part in Auguste Mariette's excavation of the Great Sphinx. A similar drawing, no doubt made at the same time and probably showing the same child, is reproduced in Hunt's autobiography, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 1905, I, p. 389 (2nd. ed., 1913, I, p. 286), and was among the Burt Collection of Holman Hunt drawings sold at Sotheby's on 10 October 1985, lot 16 (repr. in cat.)