Jeremiah 9:17

The Lord instructed Jeremiah to summon the professional mourners (Heb. meqonenoth) to come forward.

"In the Middle East even today, on the occasion of deaths or calamities, mourning is carried out by professional women who follow the funeral bier uttering a high-pitched shriek. Some of the Egyptian tomb paintings depict boatloads of professional mourners with their hair and garments disheveled accompanying a corpse on its way to a burial." [Note: Thompson, p. 316.]