Siwa Oasis

The Siwa Oasis is an urban oasis in Egypt, located in the Western Desert between the Qattara Depression and the Great Sand Sea, east of the Egypt–Libya border and a distance from Cairo. It is known for its role in ancient Egypt as the site of an oracle of Amun, whose ruins are a tourist attraction, and was anciently called the Oasis of Amun-Ra after the major Egyptian deity.

The oasis sits in a deep depression that falls below sea level. To the west, the al Jaghbub Oasis lies in a similar depression, and to the east, the large Qattara Depression is also below sea level. The depression is fertile thanks to natural artesian wells and irrigation, and it contains about 200 natural springs. Siwa is directly next to the Libyan Desert plateau. Its geology consists of horizontal layers of porous limestone alternating with marls and clays from the Miocene. Erosion along the dunes has created limestone plateaus and inselbergs that locals call mountains (adrar in Tamazight). Two large salt lakes are fed by agricultural drainage water. The oasis supports the cultivation of thousands of date palms and olives, and has a temperate desert climate.

The ancient Egyptian name for the oasis was sḫt jꜣmw, meaning "Field of Trees." The native Libyan toponym may survive in the Egyptian t̠ꜣ(j) n d̠rw "tꜣj on the fringe," where t̠ꜣ transcribed the local Palaeo-Berber name *Se or *Sa. This name appears in the works of Muslim geographers as Santariyyah. Siwah is the Arabic name for the oasis, called Sali in Berber, and Isiwan in modern Berber. The etymology of Siwah is unclear. Champollion derives it from Coptic ⲥⲟⲟⲩϩ (soouh), a corruption of the Egyptian word for "oasis," ⲟⲩⲁϩ (ouoh). Another place name in Kharga Oasis, S.t-wȝḥ (modern Deir el-Hagar), may share the same etymology. Basset links it to a Berber tribal name swh from the early Islamic period, while Ilahiane, following Chafik, links it to the Shilha Berber word asiwan, a type of bird of prey, and thus to Amun-Ra, whose symbols included the falcon. Some classical authors called the site "Ammonium."

Though settled since at least the 10th millennium BCE, the earliest connection with Ancient Egypt is the 26th Dynasty, when a necropolis was established. Ancient Greek settlers from Cyrene made contact around the 7th century BCE, and the oracle temple of Amun (Greek: Zeus Ammon) was said by Herodotus to take the image of a ram. Herodotus also knew of a "fountain of the Sun" that ran coldest at noon. During his campaign against the Persian Empire, Alexander the Great reached the oasis, supposedly following birds across the desert. His court historians claimed the oracle confirmed him as both divine and the legitimate Pharaoh of Egypt, though his motives remain debated. In the Ptolemaic Kingdom, its ancient Egyptian name was sḫ.t-ỉm3w, meaning "Field of Trees."

In the 12th century, Al-Idrisi noted the population was mainly Berber with an Arab minority; a century earlier, Al-Bakri said only Berbers lived there. The Egyptian historian Al-Maqrizi visited in the 15th century and described the local language as similar to that of the Zenata. The first European to document a visit since Roman times was English traveller William George Browne in 1792, who came to see the Temple of the Oracle of Amun. Bompiani, describing 19th-century explorer Luigi Robecchi Bricchetti, called the site the Oasis of Jupiter Ammon.

Siwa was annexed by Muhammad Ali of Egypt in 1820, but the Egyptian representative was assassinated in 1838. Muhammad al-Sanusi stayed there for a few months and gathered followers. Later, Siwa was a base for the Sanusiyya in their fight against the British from 1915 to 1917. In spring 1893, German explorer and photographer Hermann Burchardt took photographs of Siwa’s architecture, now at the Ethnological Museum of Berlin. Egyptian rule from distant Cairo was initially tenuous, marked by revolts. Egypt asserted firmer control after a 1928 visit by King Fuad I, who condemned local homosexual practices and specified punishments to align Siwan behavior with Egyptian morals.

Siwa saw fighting in both World Wars. The British Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) was based there, and Rommel’s Afrika Korps took possession three times. German soldiers went skinny dipping in the lake of the oracle, contrary to local customs banning public nudity. In 1942, while the Italian 136th Infantry Division Giovani Fascisti occupied the oasis, a tiny Egyptian puppet government-in-exile was set up at Siwa. The oasis appears briefly as an LRDG base in the 1958 war film Ice Cold in Alex.

The ancient fortress of Siwa, called Shali Ghadi (Shali being the town’s name, Ghadi meaning "remote"), was built on natural rock (an inselberg) from kershif (salt and mud-brick) and palm logs. After three days of heavy rain in 1926 damaged it, it was abandoned for similar unreinforced housing on the surrounding plain, some of which have since been replaced by more modern construction.