SIWA
THE OASIS OF JUPITER AMMON
CHAPTER I
THE COAST
“. . . Some strip of herbage strown
That just divides the desert from the sown.”
SIWA—pronounced “Seewah”—is a little-known oasis in the Libyan Desert on the borders of Egypt and Tripoli. It lies 200 miles south of Sollum, the Egypt-Tripoli frontier port on the Mediterranean coast, and almost 400 miles west of the Nile Valley. Siwa is the northernmost oasis of a string of oases which stretch from Egypt into the middle of Tripoli. These “Islands of the Blessed”—as they were called by the ancients—are natural depressions in the great Libyan table-land which are preserved from the inroads of shifting sand by the high limestone cliffs that surround them, and are made fertile and habitable by numbers of sweet water springs. Siwa consists of a little group of oases in a depression about 30 miles long and 6 miles wide, lying 72 feet below the level of the sea, surrounded by a vast barren table-land, parched and featureless, where rain rarely falls, which can only be crossed if one carries sufficient water for the whole journey.
Siwa is one of the least known and most interesting places in North Africa, but owing to its inaccessibility very few Europeans had visited it prior to the outbreak of the Great War. It has a population of between three and four thousand inhabitants, who are not Arabs but the remains of an older race, of Berber origin. They have a language of their own, which is only spoken, not written, and has survived among the dwellers of the oasis from many centuries before the Arab invasion, owing to the remoteness of the country and the slight communication between Siwa and the outer world. At present the birth-rate is considerably lower than the death-rate, so it appears likely that in course of time the Siwan race will become extinct.
It was my fortune, after spending a year or so on the coast, to be stationed at Siwa, during 1920-21, in command of a section of the Frontier Districts Administration Camel Corps, and for some time as the District Officer of the oasis. Under the present regime there has been one British officer, seconded from the Army for service under the Egyptian Government, posted alone in the Siwa oasis. While I was there I spent my spare time in discovering as much as possible about the history of the place, and the manners and customs of this desert community, which differ very considerably from those of the Arabs or the people of Egypt. No history, from its earliest times to the present day, has ever been written of this strange place, and it appears probable that now, when British officials are being withdrawn from Egypt, Siwa will once more sink back into obscurity.
