Siwa Oasis

you know, you're getting thrown forward and backward.

And Sam, our Egyptologist yells, hey, this is we're 20 minutes in our three months, our three months journey to Siwa.

It took three months to get to Siwa.

Wow.

Yeah.

We went to two oasises.

One was part of the retreat, which was Fayum.

And then the other oasis, which was the big one, Siwa, which is Cleopatra's hangout.

That's the word.

A photograph taken by Miller near Siwa in Egypt in 1937 depicts a desolate desert landscape observed through a torn fly screen.

What is its title? Portrait of Space.

Portrait of Space, exactly.

So Arabs and Berbers.

But the Berbers in their history, like the pre-Islamic period, I mean, pre the 7th century, exactly from the Roman period, from the 3rd century BC until the 7th century AD, this period, many of the tribes of the Berbers in North Africa, because we are talking about a huge territory, Start from Morocco in the west, all the way to Egypt, all the way to Siwa oasis in Egypt in the Nile River, which still exists now.

And they are Berbers in Egypt.

And you can go from the north, from Algeria or the Mediterranean.

Promptly the next day, the camel owners whose pleasant little plan had been revealed to me found themselves discharged.

Others with their camels were forthwith hired to take me to Siwa.

Instead of the straight line to Jagbub, we would go along the two other sides of the triangle whose apexes were Solom, Siwa, and Jagbub.

It would materially lengthen the first part of our journey, but after all, time and distance were less important than safe arrival.

The road by way of Siwa had several advantages.

It lay in Egyptian territory and not in the country inhabited by the tribes to which the first set of camelmen belonged.

In the second place, it ran through more frequented territory where a treacherous waylaying of our caravan would have been more perilous to the waylayers.

On January 1st, the caravan started, and three days later, Lieutenant Mather very kindly took me in a motor car to catch up with it.

Promptly the next day, the camel owners whose pleasant little plan had been revealed to me found themselves discharged.

Others, with their camels, were forthwith hired to take me to Siwa.

Instead of the straight line to Jagbub, we would go along the two other sides of the triangle whose apexes were Sollum, Siwa, and Jagbub.

It would materially lengthen the first part of our journey, but, after all, time and distance were less important than safe arrival.

The road by way of Siwa had several advantages.

It lay in Egyptian territory and not in the country inhabited by the tribes to which the first set of camel men belonged.

In the second place, it ran through more frequented territory where a treacherous waylaying of our caravan would have been more perilous to the waylayers.

On January 1st, the caravan started, and three days later Lieutenant Bather very kindly took me in a motor car to catch up with it.

Happy to be here and excited that you're going to now take the journey with us for Egyptian food.

By way of background, I'm a travel writer and my first book was on Siwa, which is a little oasis in the Sahara.

And that was a book that came out in 2012.

And then there was a 10-year break in order to spend time with family, raise the kids.

easily have a book called Egyptian Bread.

Yeah, because if you think about how far out it's going, If Egypt had the first leavened bread appearing there, I mean, imagine all the variations that happened after that.

And also, for example, Siwa, which is where I wrote the oasis I wrote my first book on, there's just such an oversupply of dates there.

They've gone ahead and created date bread.

Well, speaking of the Saharan detachment, Andy, I've got one word I'd like to throw out there and just hear what your thoughts are, or maybe even just look at your face.

Siwa.

Shouldn't ignore it

this time.

After this visit, uh, Alexander the Great reportedly started to think of himself as the son of Ammon And this particular event, uh, purportedly happened almost 200 years prior to Alexander's visit.

The Oracle had refused to recognize Cambyses as sovereign over Egypt, so Cambyses sent an army away, uh, out from Thebes to the Oasis of Siwa, where the Temple of Ammon was located, to destroy the Oracle, but the army never arrived.

So here's what Herodotus had to say about that.

"As for those who were sent to march against the Ammonians as they set out and journeyed from Thebes with guides, and it is known that they came to the city of Oasis inhabited by the Samians, said to be of the Ascrionian tribe, seven days march from Thebes across sandy desert.