"Sheheb, a plague of Set," the old woman answered in a whisper, putting the palms of both hands to her forehead as in prayer.
Sheheb, the south-east wind, blows from the Arabian desert. Fiery clouds of sand, thrown up by the whirlwind, fall slanting upon the ground with the noise of hail. The sun turns crimson, then dark like an ember. At midday lamps have to be lit. Neither men nor animals can breathe in the black stuffy darkness; plants perish. The whirlwind never lasts more than an hour; if it lasted longer everything would be burned up as with fire.
In the fiery darkness of the Sheheb Dio lay on her couch like one dead. The wind howled outside and the whole house shook as though it would fall. Someone seemed to be knocking and throwing handfuls of sand at the closed shutters, the flame of the lamp flickered in the wind that penetrated through the walls.
The door opened suddenly and someone came in.
"Zenra, is it you?" Dio called.
There was no answer. Somebody approached the couch. Dio recognized Tammuzadad and was not frightened or surprised, she seemed to have expected him. He bent over her and smiled; no, it was not Tamu, but Merira. She looked closely and % again it was Tamu and then Merira again; first it was one then another; they interchanged and merged into one another like the two colours of a shot material. He bent down still lower, looked into her eyes as though asking a question. She knew that if she answered 'no' with her eyes only he would go away; but she closed her eyes without speaking. He lay down beside her and embraced her. She lay like one dead.
When he had gone away she thought "I will go and hang myself." But she went on lying quite still. She may have dropped asleep and by the time she woke up the Sheheb was over, the sky was clear and the flame of the lamp looked pale. Zenra came in and Dio understood that it had been delirium.
After the Sheheb the weather freshened. The sweet breath of the north wind could be felt in the shade of the evergreen palms and cedars fragrant like a censer of incense. Only at times a smell of carrion came from the direction of Sheol and then Dio thought of her Sheheb nightmare. It was the last attack of her illness. The wound healed so completely that the only trace left of it was a pale pink scar on the dark skin, and Dio was quite well.
The king had once given her a beautiful scroll of papyrus, yellowish like old ivory, smoothed to perfection with wild boar's tooth, fine, strong, imperishable.
Papyrus was expensive and only used for the most important records; everything else was written on clay or wooden tablets, flat white stones or fragments of broken earthenware.