2023

Facts about Temple of the Oracle

The Siwa oasis lies 593 km west of Alexandria and 302 km from Marsa Matrouh, close to the Libyan border. Access is via an asphalt road from Marsa Matrouh. Siwa lies at the center of a chain of small oases at the end of the Qattara depression. Like Qattara, the oasis lies 24 meters below sea level. Populated by around 15,000 inhabitants, it extends over 80 km in length and 29 km in width. Water is abundant and, due to lack of drainage, can accumulate in lakes with a high salt content.

Siwa boasts beautiful landscapes of dunes, ponds and lakes, reminders of a sea that once covered the desert. Many fossilized shells can be found here. With its many mud-brick villages, Siwa is a great place for walking. The picturesque oasis boasts 300,000 palm trees, 70,000 olive trees and over 300 springs and streams of pure, fresh water. Donkeys make up the majority of the animals, as camels are strangely not allowed to stay here due to a dangerous fly bite.

Constructed in the 26th Dynasty, the Temple of Amun is a magnificent structure whose oracle was highly influential during the Greek and Roman eras. According to one legend, the temple was built in honor of Ham, the son of Noah, by Danaus the Egyptian; another legend relates the temple's foundation to the Greek god Dionysus. Lost in the western desert. Dionysus was dying of thirst, when a ram appeared and guided him to the spring of Agroumi, in gratitude Dionysus erected this temple.

Oracle, the manifestations of God, were highly revered in the ancient world, able to see into the future, they were regularly consulted before important decisions were made, it is thought that Alexander that Alexander the Great wanted proof that he was the son of Zeus from the Siwan oracle. The Greek god of the gods, when he and his entourage arrived, a manifestation of the oracle paraded through the city accompanied by eighty priests, after his visit to the oracle, each time his image appeared on the coin, Alexander was shown with ram's horns, the symbol of Amun, the god of the gods in Egypt.

The temple was famous throughout the Mediterranean world. It was accessed from the south via a first sloping courtyard, built in the axis of the temple. At the start of this slope was a well. This is where processions were held; only a few of the courtyard's foundations remain. Once through the courtyard, you came to an Egyptian-style façade, Hellenized by the addition of two fluted Doric columns, the right-hand one of which is missing.

This brought us to the covered parts of the building: vestibule and sanctuary (or cella) with “sacristy” room, where oracular procedures took place in the presence of the consultant and priests of Amun. The room was covered by a double wooden ceiling. A priest came to stand in the open space before the ceremony, and could access the false ceiling by means of a staircase, through an L-shaped gallery surrounding the northeast corner of the oracle room (as at Karnak and Kom Ombo). To the right of the sanctuary, a small crypt with three niches was used to store cult objects.