Siwa Oasis

The most remote and most distinctive of Egypt's oases, 560 kilometres from Cairo and close to the Libyan border. Siwa is a genuine cultural island: the language spoken here is Siwi, a Berber language unrelated to Arabic, and the customs, dress and architecture belong to North Africa rather than the Nile valley.

The town sits among an estimated three hundred thousand palms and seventy thousand olive trees, fed by more than two hundred springs, in a depression well below sea level.

What to see

• The Shali fortress — a collapsing mudbrick citadel rising over the town, still climbable, best at sunset
• The Temple of the Oracle at Aghurmi, on its own rock
• Gebel al-Mawta, the Mountain of the Dead, honeycombed with painted rock tombs
• Cleopatra's Bath, a stone-lined spring pool, and Fatnas Island for sunset over the salt lake
• The salt lakes, extraordinarily buoyant and startlingly blue

Before you go

Siwa is conservative — considerably more so than the coast. Dress modestly, ask before photographing people, and be aware that separate bathing arrangements apply at most springs. It is a long drive from anywhere; most visitors come via Marsa Matruh.

Siwa's fame in antiquity rested on its oracle. The temple of Amun here was one of the most respected in the ancient world, consulted by Greeks as readily as by Egyptians, and its remoteness seems only to have added to its authority.

Alexander's detour

In 331 BCE, having taken Egypt and founded Alexandria, Alexander the Great made an unexplained journey across the desert to consult it. The march nearly killed his party; the sources describe a sandstorm, lost bearings, and — depending on the account — ravens or snakes that guided them to the oasis.

What the oracle told him is unknown. He entered the sanctuary alone and never disclosed the answer, saying only that he was satisfied. What followed is not disputed: from that point Alexander presented himself as a son of Amun, a claim that shaped how he was depicted and worshipped for the rest of his life. Some ancient writers believed he asked to be buried here.

The fortress that melted

Shali was built in the 13th century from karshif — blocks of salt-rich mud cut from the lake beds. It is an excellent material in a place that never rains, and a catastrophic one when it does. Three days of rain in 1926 dissolved much of the town, and the inhabitants moved down to new houses on the flat. The ruin above is what was left standing.

A separate people

Siwa has been Egyptian territory throughout, but its isolation preserved a distinct society — Berber-speaking, organised by clan, with its own laws, crafts, silverwork and a much-studied body of custom. A paved road to the coast was only completed in the 1980s, and much of what makes Siwa unusual survived precisely because getting there was so hard.