As hyenas are some of my favourite animals, I was really keen to create an illustration of one with a bit of folklore inspiration. However it was quite challenging to find a tale that didn’t paint hyenas in a negative light, as they are almost always the villain in any story.
Eventually I found a brief mention of a story from Tabwa mythology which tells of the spotted hyena being the first animal to capture the sun and bring it down to warm the cold earth, which immediately gave me some powerful imagery. Unfortunately I couldn’t find much detail on this story so please let me know if you’ve ever heard of it!