In the ancient times, the remote desert settlement of the Siwa people in the Oasis, was particularly disconnected to the outside World. The fossilized marine shells and like forms found further South from the ancient place suggests that the desert used to be an ocean.
The Oasis is located in the middle of the harsh terrain of the desert and is surrounded by endless of perfectly flat and featureless desert land in which easily anyone can be lost. There is no natural landmarks or points of reference in the desert land, and, in the ancient times, they used the flight of specific birds to get there. Now, in recent times, a point of reference was made, marking exactly half way in the desert before reaching the Oasis, with an isolated roadside cafeteria with its own mosque. The road then dips and descends into the Oasis.
Siwa's settlement with its own specific language was known in ancient Egypt as the Land of Palms, and home for countless centuries to the legendary Oracle of Ammon.
The temple is set on a cliff, at the edge of a rock hill. The floor plan of it reveals a hidden passage and a chamber in which it would have been possible for a person or entity to conceal itself. Whatever was said or happened to Alexander the Great here, he took it with him to his grave 8 years later. Extensive works have been undertaken to prevent, or at least postpone, its toppling.
From the temple, a lush expanse of Palms make the more substantial Siwa Shali fortress be overlooked. The fortress itself is on height about 4 km away from the temple making it looks like 2 Islands on a green sea. The location provides the necessary impact rather than the scale of the unimpressive physical layout of the temple, enclosed by the remains of the ancient Siwa town, which, like the fortress has crumbled over time. The village was abandoned in early 20th century, after prolonged rainfall caused the mud-mortared structures, built from broken bits of the ancient temple, to collapse. In the modern Siwa town the fortress towers above its center, around its base is the town square and market with its grocers, butchers, eateries and coffee shops; also there is a busy trade in handicrafts and furniture.
It is here where that the distinction between Siwan culture and that of Cairo and the Nile Valley is at its most striking view. In a ruinous state, the old town still looks attractive even though the evidence on a large scale of inexorable time have changed it. Whatever it once was, it has been eroded both by weather and by the shifting sands of human needs and aspiration. Much of its fallen structures done by the forces of nature, especially the palm wood beams that held the buildings together have been recycled by the today Siwans for the building of new homes elsewhere. In Siwa language, differences between what was and what is, between private and public is very complex and sometimes looks very contradictory.
The Siwa Shali fortress, at the hub of the Oasis, was the fortified home of the Siwan families in the ancient times, and its people only slept within its fortified walls. The ancient remains of the town still crumble there. Just a few miles South of the town, are the home of parallel dunes, a sea of sand, some of them as high as 50 meters.
Outside the fortified walls, and inside the date palm gardens, lived the Zaggalah. They were men employed by wealthy Siwans to tend the gardens, and it was not permitted to them to marry before the age of 40. They constitute a separate social class in Siwan society, and for the Zaggalah, who would rarely was able to see a woman, homosexuality was commonplace. Even formal marriages between man and boy were accepted. King Fu'Ad of Egypt pronounced the custom forbidden in 1928, when he visited the Oasis, but the practice has continued in secrecy.
The traditional Siwa people has its own way of life and its custom is very particular according to its purpose in the affairs of their world. Women has their face covered and men are not able to see them uncovered in their everyday life. Married women rarely leave their home, except to visit relatives, but never go alone. Women wrap themselves in traditional Tarfottet, a blue embroidered garment made in the Nile Valley exclusively for the Women of the Oasis, that covers them head to foot. Siwan women have long been famed for all their public modesty, and for the finery of their garment and jewelry, the display of which is confined to private time and space.
The Oasis was visited by Alexander the Great and Ptolomy, his right hand as chief of his army, to seek legitimacy as holder of the power to make him ruler of the whole World and Ptolemy as the one in charge of the designing plan for the transmission of such power to the future generations. They bathed themselves in the deep and hot pool of water of the Oasis, surrounded by a strange garden of dates.
The Spring is circular and hemmed in by a low wall and surrounded on all sides by date palms. From time to time bubbles rise through the clear water from its depths giving an impression that the Spring boils at that specific time that usually is during the night. The warm temperature is constant, but feels different to a cold hand at midnight than to a hot hand in the afternoon. Where the pool of hot water makes a clearing in the groves, the sky forms a starlit canopy.
The name of the Spring varied since it was open to the World and it is also known as Ayn al-Hammam,
the Spring of Bath, but it is referred more often these days as Cleopatra's Bath.
The Siwan's language is only comprehended by its particular inhabitants and not known by the neighboring people, as it occurs with its closest neighbors, the inhabitants of Marsah, on the side of the Libyan border.
In our time, the deep pool of water of the Oasis, home of the date gardens surrounding the place, is already more connected to the outside World, thanks to the completion of the asphalt road that reach the place, done in the mid-eighties. This is Ammon territory and its temple erected in its honor is just steps away from the pool of water, and beyond that is the Oracle itself, perched on the Hill of Aghurmi.
The Siwans of today have internet connections, and mobile phones, making it very accessible and easy to welcome any traveler who wants to visit the place. The fact that the place now has plans to accommodate commercial flights at a nearby airport will also make it easy for travelers who do not want to experience the long hours of traveling by ground transportation, in the very near future.
From the ancient town where the ancient Siwans used to live, there is another Spring, the Spring of Juba (Ayn al-Gubah). Also, close to it, is Bir Wahed where there are hot and cold Springs. A run-off water from the hot Spring is used to irrigate a small garden. The garden bring birds so its singing can be heard around because its sound is trapped by the dunes on all sides. These type of birds were the ones who guided Alexander the great and his companion to the Oasis in the middle of the desert.
From the crest of a dune at the sun setting time the deep desert can be contemplated as nothing but dunes interspersed with rocky crags from the Qattara Depression to the Sudan. Al close quarters the sand is as beguiling as it is in the distance. Patterns are all around as a result of wind and time. Some of them were not there a day before but today they are and will be vanished tomorrow. Other patterns seems to take longer, looking undisturbed, with no probability of taking a shape, even though the World outside them change quickly.
Travelers get to the Oasis for New Year celebrations in which a gathering is concentrated there. Fires are lit and goats are roasted over the fires on spits. A circle of Siwans then plays drums and pipes and one of them dances around the circle. Even though the coming of the New Year means nothing to them they invite the visitors to perform whatever they feel to do along with their music. Some of the travelers fall in love with the deep sound of the notes played by the musicians and its instruments and get possessed by it and start dancing around the fire suggestively without control. This behavior is judged inappropriate by conservative travelers who have a different perspective about the nature of the place and are not moved to fall and get possessed by the sound of the notes. The music is very percussive with a distinctive and repetitive pattern targeting the subconscious of the visitor. The only light in the area comes from the fires used to roast the goats making it looks like a kind of ritual.
A kind of sensory deprivation of having being separated from the supposedly safe and familiar vertical way of modern city life environments is somehow felt in the emotions of the ground travelers who spend 9 hours of traveling in flat and straight road surrounded by desert land.
The image of the new town built in the middle of the desert by the Shiva people of today around the ruins, particularly on the margins at the foot of the hill where the old town used to be make the visitor think about what is the meaning of life. The new houses of today have been built from the wood of the old and beautiful palm tree garden that existed long ago, and some of them now serve as a lodging place to accommodate travelers of the today world, after having a very long trip across the desert land.
From Cairo to Marsah Matruh on Egypt's Mediterranean Coast, the traveling by ground transportation is 5 hours across the flat land, and from there 4 hours more South West into the Sahara Desert.
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