Siwa Oasis

Siwa
Siwa is different. Most Siwans are Berbers, a
people that once roamed the North African coast from Tunisia to Morocco. The
Berbers are the true Western Desert indigenous people. As early as 10,000 B.C. they
inhabited the area: as the land dried, they moved toward the coast; as conquerors
invaded, they moved to the interior. When the Arab invaders came in the seventh
century they slowly changed the sedentary Berbers until in the twelfth century the
Berbers, too, were Bedouin, nomads. Because of this connection, the Siwan language,
traditions, rites, dress, decorations, and tools are mostly alien to the other oases in the
Western Desert. They are more closely aligned with the peoples of the Maghreb, the
northern coast of Africa from Tripoli to Morocco. This is also true of the history of the
oasis.

History
Wilfred Jennings-Bramley wrote that Siwa "cannot be said to have fallen from its high
estate, for it is probably much as it was when Herodotus, Strabo, Diodorus, Plutarch,
and Pliny though it worthy of mention; only it has stood still while the world went on."
Siwa has answered to a host of names through the centuries: it was called Santariya
by the Arabs, the Oasis of Jupiter-Amun, Marmaricus Hammon, and Field of Palm
Trees. Known to have been inhabited in Paleolithic and Neolithic times, Bayle St. John
believed that Siwa was the capital of an ancient kingdom that included Qara, Arashieh
(perhaps Areg), and Bahrein. This, according to the Siwan history, was when the oasis
was called Santariya and its dominions included Nubia. During the Old Kingdom it was
a part of Tehenu, Olive Land, which seems to have been a huge area extending as far
east as Mareotis.