Siwa Oasis once drew the famous, the deeply religious and the merely curious. In the first of a two-part look at the oasis, Jenny Jobbins traces its early days and the rise and fall of the cult of the oracle Siwa Oasis lies on the edge of the Great Sand Sea only 50kms from the Libyan border. It is almost surprisingly beautiful: if one thinks one has already seen all that Egypt has on offer, Siwa proves there is even more. Outcrops of honey- coloured sandstone and crisp white chalk fringe the plateau, which is enhanced with lush palm groves and the still surface of five huge silver lakes. This Garden-of-Eden appearance, though, is deceptive: the verdant palms are short and squat; they don't grow much taller, and the soil is too salty and barren for most plants except for reeds and olives. The water of the lake is too salty for fish. Yet here lies a paradox. Siwa is famous for its dates which, along with olives and oranges, have been noted for centuries as major exports. Date palms grow taller when they are trimmed, so why are they left here to grow wild and unkempt? And where are the oranges? Farmers, when pressed, admit that little thrives except for the legendary dates and olives, although pomegranates and peaches can be fairly successful, with care. On this evidence one wonders where Siwa derived its reputation as a market garden. Perhaps someone once knew someone who had a flourishing fruit tree; or perhaps, being so fond of the place, past chroniclers were determined to give it a good press. Siwa averages 18 metres below sea level and has always had more than its share of excess ground water, and the salinity of the ground and the size of the lakes have increased over centuries of agriculture and irrigation run-off. Yet, whatever its fecundity in the past, and despite the sterility of the soil and the intense summer heat, Siwa has been inhabited from earliest times. Interestingly, Palaeolithic and Neolithic flints found there are of a similar type to those found in the Nile Valley some hundreds of kilometres away. This indicates a cultural link, which is not so surprising if one considers that movement across what we know today as the Western Desert would have been easier in prehistoric times. The barren, sandy desert was then grassland, much like the savannah of sub-Saharan Africa today. It was rich in game such as giraffe, antelope, wild cow and hartebeest, and was an ideal environment for hunter-gatherers. Not much else is known about these early people. Were they the ancestors of the Berber- speaking tribes who later, when the land became more parched, settled in the remaining green pockets that became the Libyan Desert oases? Were they the people who made up the native population in the oases's heyday under Roman rule, growing enough food to support large populations and military garrisons for an army which was famous for marching on its stomach? Who, then, were the nomadic people who appeared in the Middle Ages and built the oasis citadels 800 years ago, when the North African Fatimids ruled Egypt? Were they all one and the same? Scientists are beginning to collect DNA samples from ancient remains and may one day be able to compare them with their present-day successors. Such knowledge will help to map migrations in the region, and to understand much more about its languages and culture. The Ancient Egyptians called the lands and the people west of the fertile Nile Valley and Lake Mariout (Mareotis) the Tehenu (Land of the Olive), while the eastern part of Lake Mariout was in the Kingdom of the Harpoon. The two kingdoms were subjugated in about 3400 BC when Menes unified Egypt. But while the Kingdom of the Harpoon was assimilated into the new empire, Tehenu was not retained so easily. From the First Dynasty onwards there are records of "Libyan" invasions into unified Egypt, both military and economic, which posed a constant threat to peace and stability. In about the Sixth Dynasty another race appeared west of the Nile Delta. These people were blue eyed, fair skinned and fair haired, and the Egyptians called them the Temehu. Egyptian artists portrayed them with a single lock of hair on the side of the head and a headdress of ostrich plumes. Possibly they came from Northern Europe, reaching North Africa via the Straits of Gibraltar, but their exact origin is a mystery. The Temehu continued the incursions into Egypt. But whether the people attracted to the Nile Valley were raiders or economic migrants, and whether they travelled along the coast or through Bahariya or Fayoum, the route to Lower Egypt almost invariably passed through Siwa. Records and remains of the Old and Middle Kingdoms in Bahariya, Farafra, Dakhla and Kharga are continuing to be discovered. However, further archaeological excavations need to be made before the extent of Siwa's independence is known, since so far no evidence has been found of any Pharaonic presence in Siwa earlier than the Late Dynastic period. The archaeologist Ahmed Fakhry believed there might have been a New Kingdom temple there, but no trace of any building of that period has yet been found. Even in the XXIInd Dynasty, which was founded by a Libyan invader (who, like the men of the Temehu, wore ostrich feathers in his hair), Siwa is not mentioned in known records. It was not until the Assyrian rulers of the XXVIth Dynasty came to Egypt that Siwa was drawn on the map. From then until the end of the Roman period the oasis was known as the Oasis of Amun (Ammon), although Fakhry believes that it had already been a centre for the worship of Amun for centuries. Its name -- and its call to fame -- derived from the great Oracle of Amun, which in its day was venerated as much as the Oracle at Delphi and which lured pilgrims from all over the classical world. The Pharaoh Amasis of the XXVIth Dynasty (reigned 570-536 BC) built the Temple of the Oracle at Aghurmi -- probably, according to Fakhry, on the foundations of an earlier temple. In the XXXth Dynasty the Pharaoh Nectanebo II added to this with his temple a short distance away at Umm Ubaydah. The two temples were linked by a ceremonial causeway, and both were dedicated to Amun. About the same time a great necropolis was established on the hill of Al- Mawta and continued to be used for centuries. The historian and geographer Herodotus (c 484-425 BC) left a detailed description of the Oasis of Amun, mentioning that it was ruled by a local king named Etearchus. This king probably regarded the Pharaoh as his overlord. Herodotus also related that, in the reign of Amasis, King Croesus of Lydia tested the oracle while planning to wage war against Cyrus, king of Persia. Herodotus also recorded the famous story of the lost army of the Persian King Cambyses. In 525 BC an army led by Cambyses, son of King Cyrus, invaded Egypt and brought the XXVIth Dynasty to an end. Possibly Cambyses wanted to silence the oracle and the priests at Siwa, who had only predicted bad news for him and his forebears; whatever his reason, the year after his arrival he sent what, if not exaggerated, seems like an unnecessarily large army of 50,000 men to destroy it. They set out from Luxor and crossed the desert to Kharga Oasis, and from there, accompanied by guides, they carried on to the Oasis of Amun. They never arrived. Several decades later Herodotus wrote that the Ammonians -- the people of the oasis -- told him the army had been enveloped in a sandstorm midway between the two oases. Perhaps the great god Amun was protecting his oracle, or perhaps the guides deliberately misled the army and they became lost. National Geographic has recently joined the number of explorers aspiring to find the remains of the army, but we shall probably never know exactly where and how they met their fate. A century after Herodotus came the oracle's most famous visitor, Alexander the Great. Alexander had defeated the Persians in the Mediterranean and was now the master of Egypt. After laying the foundation stone of his new capital of Alexandria in 331 BC, he hastened to consult the oracle. Alexander almost came unstuck before he reached Siwa. Legend says he and his entourage ran out of water and were saved by a downpour of rain, only to be hit by a sandstorm. They may also have become confused by the unbearably flat, featureless expanse of desert on the nine- day march from Paraetonium (Marsa Matruh). Lost and weary, they apparently stumbled upon another oasis, thought to be Qara, 150kms or so northeast of Siwa, and from there they found their way, or were led, to the Siwan oracle. What Alexander heard there caused him to leave Egypt and move his army east. Whether the priest spoke from expediency or whether, as has been suggested, he spoke poor Greek and only accidentally used words to address Alexander as a deity, it is recorded that Alexander inferred he was divine and could thus expect a great destiny. He left at once for Asia Minor to continue his Persian campaign. Sadly, he never returned to Egypt; he died in India in 323 BC. Much later the historians Diodoros Curtius Rufus and Justin recorded that on his deathbed Alexander asked to be buried at the Ammoneion -- the Greek name for the Temple of the Oracle at Siwa. There are no surviving eyewitness reports of his death and the original source of this assertion is not known, but the Macedonian king was fascinated by the oracle and it is quite probable that he did express a wish to be buried in Egypt. There are tombs and other remains dating from the Late Dynastic period in Siwa, but the large number of monuments from the Graeco-Roman era, which began with the reign of Alexander, indicates a population boom in the oasis at that time. By the end of the classical period there were at least three temples: the two temples to Amun and, at Al-Maraqi on the western side of the oasis, the so-called Doric temple which has now completely disappeared. There were other temples in the settlements located in fertile patches surrounding Siwa itself. Once it was endorsed by Alexander's visit, the fame of the oracle increased. Many classical celebrities came to ask its advice, among them Hannibal, who sent representatives to consult it at the end of the third century BC. But eventually oracles everywhere went out of fashion, and in 23 BC the geographer Strabo observed that the institution which had once enjoyed such a high reputation was then almost forgotten. Nevertheless the Ammonian priests were quick to pay their respects to the Emperor Hadrian when he visited Egypt in 130 AD. The oracle continued to draw believers at least until the second half of the same century, and the priests may have continued to serve Amun for another 400 years. The rock and cliff faces round Siwa and neighbouring oases such as Qara, Al-Areg, Bahrein and Nawames are studded with shallow orifices like so many woodworm bores. These are tombs carved into the rock; some date from the Late Dynastic and Greek periods and contained mummies, others are from the Roman period -- pagan and Christian -- when true mummification was no longer practised and where the only human remains found are dry bones. All those that are accessible -- that is, not buried under dunes -- have been robbed, with contents and door slabs removed or smashed. Only very few tombs are decorated, and these tend to date from very early periods or much later when Christian hermits took up residence in the tombs. At Sharuuf, an old village, and Zeitoun, a new one but now abandoned, temples have been incorporated into the core structure of the modern village. Other sites show little sign of habitation since the day more than a thousand years ago when sand and shortage of sweet water drove the last residents away. It is hard nowadays to imagine what it might have been like to live in the Oasis of Amun in its Roman heyday. Despite its poor soil it was said to support some orchards and vineyards, yet compared with many other oases at that time -- when rainfall may have been slightly more abundant than it is today -- life must have been hard. Camels did not thrive -- there are still no camels in Siwa -- and people relied on donkeys for transport. Whatever was planted, all that was certain to grow, as we have seen, was dates and olives. At times in the history of the oasis this is all the residents had to eat, and a paste made of the two is still a local staple. But we can presume that the oracle was a valuable asset; it brought in pilgrims, and this in turn would be a foundation for trade. An export first favoured by the Greeks was the pure, translucent rocks of salt from the lakes, which they called ammonia. At some point the same name was applied to the gas (and, mixed with water, the liquid) extracted from sal- ammoniac, said to have first been made in the oasis from camel dung. Some sources say the oasis people mined iron, emeralds and lapis lazuli. Residents in the Hellenistic and Roman eras could thus presumably afford to import necessary commodities, and perhaps even luxuries, from Alexandria and the Mediterranean. Yet the oasis remained relatively isolated. The empire's official religion, Christianity, had little appeal to those who lived such a remote and traditional life. Indeed, many historians believe Siwans did not convert, even though at least one source states that Christian leaders were banished there in the early days. The only object in the oasis which might possibly be Christian is a burnt brick wall at Balad Al-Rum beside Al-Maraqi which may have been part of a church, although it could equally have been a Roman fortress. The order to ban paganism and close the empire's remaining temples was issued by the Emperor Justinian about the year 527 AD, and it is unlikely that the Oasis of Amun -- which the Romans considered part of Libya -- escaped. At some point in history its temples were dismantled, and it is possible that much of this act of sacrilege was carried out deliberately by iconoclasts putting across a point to a local population who still used their temples as centres of worship to the sun. Nevertheless, despite the closure of the temples the ancient god continued to be worshipped in the oasis, and he was probably venerated until the community converted to Islam in the Middle Ages. One reason for the persistence of the old religion was that Amun, as god of the setting sun, was also venerated in Libya, indeed the worship of the ram-headed god was as deeply entrenched among the indigenous Berbers of the Libyan desert as it had been among the Ancient Egyptians. In the fourth century these Berbers began to terrorise the desert oases, making raids as far as the Nile Valley. Siwa certainly could not escape their impact, and quite probably was a hub of their activities. In 641 AD an event occurred which was to change things for ever. The Muslims arrived in Egypt, sweeping along the north coast and destroying the Roman stations in their path. Most of the wells they blocked were never rehabilitated, which led to the further depopulation of a region already depleted as a direct result of the collapse of Roman governance and the ensuing Berber incursions. It was to take several centuries for the full impact of the new rule to reach the Oasis of Amun. Meanwhile this was Berber territory, and the residents of the oasis, entrenched in their fortified hill town of Aghurmi, were obliged to none but these desert lords. Further reading: Blottière, Alain, Siwa: the oasis, Harpocrates, Alexandria, 2000. Bayle, St John, Adventures in the Libyan Desert and the Oasis of Jupiter Ammon, London, 1849. Dalrymple Belgrave, C , Siwa: The Oasis of Jupiter Ammon, 1922, re-printed by DARF Publishers, London. Fakhry, Ahmed , The Oases of Egypt, Volume 1: Siwa, AUC Press, Cairo, 1973. Jackson, Robert B, Empire's Edge: Exploring Rome's Egyptian Frontier, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2002. Vivian, Cassandra, The Western Desert of Egypt, AUC Press, Cairo, 2000.
