At Wed Médineh we witnessed a funeral, which seemed odd enough to us. A woman had died three days before; the first day after her decease, then the third, the seventh and later days have particular ceremonies. An hour before sunset above a hundred women and children had assembled before the house, and many more kept continually coming and cowering down beside them. Two daughters of the deceased were there, who had already strewn their highly-ornamented heads, powdered with fat in the Arab manner, with ashes, and rubbed the whole upper part of the body white with them,[80] so that only the eyes and mouth gleam freshly and as if inlaid from the white mask. The women wore long cloths round their hips, the young girls and children the _rahât_, a girdle of close hanging straps of leather, generally bound about the loins, with a string prettily adorned with shells and pearls, and falling halfway down the thigh. A great wooden bowl of ashes was placed there, and continually replenished. Close to the door, on both sides, crouched female musicians, who partly clapped their hands in time, with yelling, ear-piercing screams, partly beat the noisy _darabúka_ (a kind of hand-drum, called here in the Sudan _dalúka_), and partly struck hollow calabashes, swimming in tubs of water, with sticks. The two daughters, from eighteen to twenty years of age, and the nearest relations, began to move slowly towards the door in pairs, by a narrow lane formed in the midst of the ever-increasing mob. Then suddenly they all began to scream, to clap their hands, and to bellow forth unearthly cries, upon which the others turned round and began their horrible dance of violent jerks. With convulsively strained windings and turnings of the upper part of the body, they pushed their feet on, quite slowly and measuredly, threw their bosoms up with a sudden motion, and turned the head back over the shoulders, which they racked in every direction, and thus wound themselves forward with almost closed eyes. In this way they went down a little hill, for fifteen or sixteen paces, when they threw themselves on the ground, buried themselves in dust and ashes, and then returned to begin the same dance anew. The younger of the two daughters had a pretty slender figure, with an incredibly elastic body, and resembled an antique when standing quietly upright or lying on the ground with the head down, with her regular and soft, but immovable features and classical form, quite peaceably even during the dance. This dancing procession went on over and over again. Each of the mourners must at least have gone through it once, and the nearer the relationship the oftener it is repeated. Whoever cannot get up to the ash-tub takes ashes from the head of a neighbour to strew it on their own head. First, in this squatting assembly, some women crouch, who understand how to sob and to shed tears in quantities, which leave long black streaks on their whitened cheeks.