It is an Egyptian city and oasis in the Western Desert, about 300 km from the Mediterranean coast to the southwest of Marsa Matrouh, and administratively affiliated to the Matrouh Governorate. It has wells and springs that are used for irrigation, drinking, natural water filling and treatment, and there are four major lakes, while several archaeological sites were discovered there, such as the Temple of Amun, which witnesses the phenomenon of the spring equinox twice a year, and the tombs of the Mountain of the Dead, and declared a nature reserve with an area of 7800 km, includes several types of animal and plant life forms. The oasis is inhabited by approximately 35,000 people, most of whom work in agriculture or tourism. The oasis has a continental desert climate. It is very hot in summer, while its winters are warm during the day and very cold at night. Siwa is famous for medical tourism, as its sand provides natural elements suitable for alternative medicine purposes. While safari trips using four-wheel drive vehicles are among the popular trips for visitors to the oasis. Some statistics indicate that Siwa receives about 30,000 Egyptian and foreign tourists annually. And a number of foreign and Arab sites ranked it among the 9 most isolated places on the planet. Architecture in Siwa has a special and distinctive character, as traditional houses are built with karshif stone, which consists of salt and fine sand mixed with mud, and doors and windows are made of olive and palm trees. The arts of embroidery and handcrafted pottery are among the most distinguished traditional crafts in the oasis, on top of which comes the tagine dishes, and the beautifully decorated traditional pyramid-shaped desert cooking pots. The people of Siwa have a special festival, which is the festival of harvest, which they celebrate at the full moon in the sky in the month of October every year.
Some believe that the name Siwa came from the word “Sikht am” meaning the land of palm trees, or it goes back to the old name “That.” The oasis was called in the past by many names, including “Penta”, and this name was found in one of the texts recorded in the Temple of Edfu, and it was called “Oasis of Amun” until the era of the Ptolemies, who called it “the Oasis of Jupiter Amun”, and the Arabs knew it as “Al-Aqsa Oasis”, which is the name that was mentioned Al-Maqrizi's plans. While Ibn Khaldun referred to it as “Tenisawa”, which is the name of a branch of the Zintana tribes in North Africa, as Al-Idrisi referred to it as “Sentari”, and said that it is inhabited by a people mixed between Berbers and Bedouins.
Before the year 2900 BC, a people of the Libyans known as the people of annihilation or relinquishment continued to attack Lower Egypt, and they used the Siwa Oasis as a center for their encroachment on Egypt, so King "Sneferu", the last king of the Third Dynasty, attacked and seized the oasis, to avoid the evil of the Libyans. In 1970 BC, the Libyan tribes raided Lower Egypt through Siwa, and King Sesostris, the second king of the Twelfth Dynasty, fought them to return them to their country defeated. In 1547 BC, the Libyans attacked Egypt, taking advantage of its ruler's preoccupation with the war in the country of Nubia, but King "Amenhotep I" inflicted heavy losses on them. During the reign of King "Menftah", the pharaoh repelled the attack of the Libyans by land and sea.
Before the Persian occupation of Egypt, their leader Cambyses sent his army to occupy Siwa, which the priests of the god Amun in her temple had predicted a fatal end to him. He prepared an army of fifty thousand soldiers to demolish the temple of Amun and occupy the oasis, but this army lost its way and perished in the desert and did not reach Siwa. After that incident, the prophecy of the priests in Cambyses was fulfilled, so he fell ill and died.
After Alexander the Great entered Egypt and established the city of Alexandria, he decided to visit the Temple of Amun in Siwa, which gained wide fame after the incident of the Cambyses army. In the winter of 331 BC, Alexander arrived at the temple of Amun in Siwa, and the high priest escorted him to the Holy of Holies - a dark room that only the high priest and the king could enter - and he did not allow any of his assistants to accompany him. When Alexander left the temple, he seemed relieved, and refused to reveal what happened inside, and all he said to his friends was, "I heard what my heart loves."
Siwa remained independent in its civilization and way of life after the Islamic conquest of Egypt. The leader Musa bin Naseer tried to conquer it in the year 708 AD during the Umayyad era as ruler of North Africa. He moved to it and found a city surrounded by a great fortress with iron doors, but he found it difficult to enter and left it, It is likely that the entry of the Islamic religion to Siwa was before the end of the first century AH. In 969 AD, the Fatimid armies captured the oasis.
In February 1820, Muhammad Ali Pasha prepared an expedition of 1,300 soldiers led by Hassan Bey Al-Shamasherji to conquer Siwa. Fighting broke out between the forces and the people of the oasis, which ended with the victory of Muhammad Ali's forces and their recognition of loyalty to the Egyptian government. In the modern era, the armies of the axis entered the oasis and occupied it on July 20, 1942, and evacuated them from it on November 8, 1942, after their defeat in the Battle of El Alamein.
Siwa is one of the depressions of the Western Desert that formed a green oasis on an area of 1088 km. Siwa has an area of 94,263 km² and belongs to Matrouh Governorate. It is 820 km from Cairo, 65 km from the Libyan border, 300 km west of Marsa Matrouh, and 600 km west of the Nile Valley. It is bordered to the north by a series of rocky mountains, to the south by a series of sand dunes, and it enjoys a mild climate throughout the winter, and is 18 meters below sea level, which makes its groundwater close and easy to use, which is based on the cultivation of palms and olive trees that produce dates and olives of the finest in the world. Egypt, and the oasis is mediated by four salt lakes: Lake Al-Maaser to the northeast of the oasis, Lake Al-Zaytoun to the east of the oasis, Lake Siwa, west of Shali, and Lake Al-Maraki to the west. There are many deserted oases and depressions belonging to Siwa, including Shayata Oasis 55 km west of Siwa, Al Malfi Oasis 75 km northwest of Siwa, Al-Laraj Oasis, Nawamseh Oasis, and Bahrain Oasis. Siwa has a continental desert climate, as it is very hot in summer, while its winters are warm during the day and very cold at night, and the most dangerous thing that Siwa is exposed to is torrential rain.