Exploring Siwa
Trip Start
May 09, 2005
1
45
53
Trip End
Aug 01, 2005
Siwa,
Egypt
Saturday, July 16, 2005
A fully veiled Siwa woman
! I spoke to a boy of about 17 to learn about the marriage practices in Siwa. He told me that the women are usually married at about 15 or 16 years old. The boys are anywhere from 20-30 when they marry, depending upon when they complete the building of their home. The women cannot have jobs and their life is mainly in the home raising children and other domestic chores. They begin wearing the full veil once they are married, to prevent other men from looking at them. But otherwise, the girls just wear the standard head scarf when they are unmarried.Anyways, we decided to hit up some of the shops first as Siwa boasts some very lovely and unique crafts. Isabelle was interested in some carpets and and the woman working in the shop directed us around the corner to get a glimpse into how the carpets are made.
We went into a compound that looked like a school and we were able to watch the girls making carpets on these large weaving apparati. It was all done purely by hand with very few tools to accompany their work. I have a new and very profound appreciation for their handiwork. I don't have a good eye for seeing what is hand made and what is machine made in China...but I am slowly learning. So usually I look at a carpet as a quick-make on a machine. But I watched a girl working on a tiny little carpet and was told it took about 15 days to make!
A Siwa home
! It was maybe 6x12" in size and was only sold for about $4. We went to another room that had a different style of weaving performed. A large area rug for a home takes up to about 6 months to make. I knew I couldn't carry home a big carpet, so I bought a small circular one that had a cheesy scene on it, but after seeing how hard these girls work, I wanted to support their work.Afterwards, we headed up to the Gebel al-Mawta (Mountain of the Dead). It is just as it sounds, a small hill that is honeycombed with tombs. There are hundreds with most never properly excavated. The tombs back to Ptolemaic (the era after Alexander died) and Roman eras. So roughly 340 BC and onwards until the Arab invasion of 641 AD. Interestingly enough, the Siwans hid out in the tombs during WWII when the Italians were bombing the area. There was not a single other tourist in sight and we just casually walked up and onto the mountain. We had to track down the man with the keys as the tombs are mostly empty (having been robbed of their goods) and many caved in. The few that offer any archaelogical evidence are locked.
We visited about 3 tombs that weren't anything too spectacular but boasted some interesting artwork. I was amazed as one tomb still had mummified bodies and bones just lying around casually
Carpet weaving 2
. The man wasn't paying attention at all and anyone could have easily pocketed anything they wanted. We headed back to the hotel to relax before our safari but suddenly decided to utilize the time instead to go see the Temple of Amun and the Temple of the Oracle. So we found Youssef and his donkey cart to take us the few miles out to the sites. Again, not a single tourist to be seen and we had to track down the site keeper to let us in. Our first stop was the Temple of the Oracle. As I already detailed in the last posting what the oracle was, I won't get into that again. But the oracle dates back to around the 6th century BC. The oracle's power was feared by many, which led many to try and destroy it. A Persian king tried to send an army of 50,000 men to destroy it once and the tale goes that the desert opened up and swallowed the men in a sandstorm. Much of the oracle temple is in ruins but it's really magical to think that Alexander the Great once went along that same path to consult the oracle.
A two minute donkey ride away was the Temple of Amun (i.e. Zeus, King of Gods). There is only one wall still sanding that does have some evidence of colored hieroglyps on it. Unfortunately, an Ottoman governer blew the temple up in 1896 in order to get building material. But historians believe the original structure was built in the 2nd/3rd century BC.
Okay, I'm going to continue this day in a new entry dedicated soley to the desert safari...
