Siwa

Siwa (city):

The town of Siwa is a quiet, relaxed and fun place with a main square where there is a market and some dusty streets that all point to that direction. There is also a museum (House of Siwa museum). Highlight is the beautiful mysterious 12th century shali mudcity at the top of the hill of the city.

In the evening, the labyrinth is illuminated with the small sunken houses, making it a mythical place, beautiful to look at walking around in the village when it’s dark. A number of buildings on the outskirts of Shali are still used as a mosque.

Others have become totally unusable through the centuries through heavy rainfall and storm. You can not avoid walking into one of the surrounding palm tree gardens that create a wonderfully relaxed atmosphere.

Around Siwa:

Aghurmi (temple and oracle)

On the hill of Aghurmi, about 4 km from Siwa, are the ruins of the temple of the oracle. This would have been built in the 6th century BC. at the remains of another temple. Already in the year 524 BC the Persian leader Cambyses would send some 50,000 soldiers this way to destroy this important building. The army would never arrive.

According to tradition, ruler Alexander the Great asked the god Amon to confirm that he was the son of Zeus, which was confirmed by the oracle. Since then he has been depicted on coins with two ram's horns (symbols of Amon).

It consists of two large halls and a shrine dedicated to Amun. The temple of Umm Ubayd is also dedicated to Amon, and was connected to the temple of the oracle by a processional way. It was built by Pharaoh Nectanebo II (30th Dynasty). After an earthquake in 1811 and a blow by dynamite by the Turkish governor in 1896, she is now a ruin.

Gebel (mountain) Al-Matwa

In the Dead Mountain (jabal al-Mawta) there are several graves from both the ancient Egyptian and the Greco-Roman period: there is the tomb of Niperpathot (he who belongs to the house of Thot) who is the largest of this cemetery.

Red hieroglyphics on the walls teaches us that this tomb is older than the 26th dynasty and that Osiris and Hathor were worshiped (here). It consists of a complex with three rooms on both sides. Other tombs are the tomb of the crocodile, the tomb of Mesu-Isis (images of cobras) and the tomb of Si-Amun.

The residents of Siwa would hide here during the bombing of WWII. English soldiers would later cut off pieces of the drawn walls to take away as a souvenir. Despite the damage, there are still a lot of drawings to be seen. 

(water) sources

There are at least three water springs where you can take a dive into around Siwa. The so-called Bath of Cleopatra (also called source of the Sun) is a well-known source in the Siwa area. The legend tells that Cleopatra would have bathed here. Others are the very romantic Fatnas source and the Bir Wahed.

The original Berber population of Siwa was attracted by this oasis of green due to the presence of a number of natural sources. One of Siwa's most illustrious and important guests was the young adventurer and conqueror Alexander the Great. He planned a 8 day expedition through the desert for a visit of the oracle of the temple of "Amun.

He asked him if he was actually the son of Zeus and he also wanted to know if he could be the latest pharaoh of Egypt the son of Amun. Besides this Greek enterprise it would take centuries before a new group of Europeans to visit the place. They would almost pay their visit with death; the very independent Berbers here were not pleased with the visit of the non-Muslims and treated their Christian guests very aggressively.

During the 19th century, the Egyptian government also had great difficulty in appropriating the oasis. During WW2 on the one hand German and Italian groups and on the other British soldiers would chase each other out Siwa several times until the German Field Marshal Rommel gave up and left the oasis for what it was. Siwa was part of Egypt at that time but was only really accessible through the asphalt road between Marsa Mutrah and the oasis in the 80s.