Exodus 10:23

but, &c. What is here described is evidently miraculous: but it is said that the sand-clouds of the Ḥamsîn(see below) sometimes travel in streaks, so that parts of the country may escape them.

The darkness was no doubt occasioned really by a sand-storm, produced by the hot electrical wind called the Ḥamsîn, which in Egypt blows in most years intermittently, usually for two or three days at a time, from the S., SE., or SW. during some 50 days in spring (hence its name, ḥamsîn= fifty). These winds spring up for the most part suddenly: they are violent, and often as hot as -the air of an oven"; and they frequently raise such an amount of sand and dust as to darken the sun, and even to conceal objects a few yards off. Men and animals like are greatly distressed by the sand and heat: the sand penetrates everywhere; and while the storm lasts, people are obliged to remain secluded in their houses. On account of the sand and dust, the darkness is really such as -can be felt." See R. Pococke, Description of the East(1743), i. 195; Volney, Voyage en Syrie et en Égypte(1787), i. 55 7; DB.iii. 892 a; A. B. Edwards, A thousand miles up the Nile2 (1889), ch. 5, p. 76 f.; Rosenm. Schol. ad loc.(a sandstorm, c.1100, producing darkness so intense that it was thought the end of the world had come); Denon [above, p. 79], i. 285 f.; and a photograph in the Ill. London News, Feb. 17, 1906.