Charles Ellicott Commentary Exodus 11:6

"And there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there hath not been, nor shall be any more." — Exodus 11:6 (ASV)

There shall be a great cry.—The shrill cries uttered by mourners in the East are well known to travellers. Mr. Stuart Poole heard those of the Egyptian women at Cairo, in the great cholera of 1848, at a distance of two miles (Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, vol. ii., p. 888). Herodotus, describing the lamentations of the Persian soldiers at the funeral of Masistius, says that “all Boeotia resounded with their clamour” (Exodus 9:24). The Egyptian monuments represent mourners as tearing their hair, putting dust upon their heads, and beating their breasts (Wilkinson, in Rawlinson’s Herodotus, vol. ii., p. 138).