Abram's wife — introduced with the sentence everything turns on: 'Now Sarai was barren; she had no child' (11:30). Endangered by the sister-story in Pharaoh's house (12:11-20). After ten childless years in Canaan she gives her slave-girl Hagar to Abram as a surrogate (16:1-3) — then, despised in the pregnant girl's eyes, afflicts her until she flees (16:4-6). At the covenant of circumcision God renames her SARAH — both forms mean 'princess' — and fastens the promise to her own body: 'kings of peoples shall come from her' (17:15-16); the first woman in the Bible God renames. Behind the tent flap at Mamre she laughs at the one-year promise, then denies it, afraid — 'No, you did laugh' (18:12-15); the laugh is kept, and named, in her son. At Gerar the old ruse takes her into a second royal house — and the disclosure finally comes: she is Abraham's half-sister, his father's daughter (20:12).