The Siwis are the only surviving Berber-speaking community in Egypt. They inhabit the oasis of Siwa in the Western Desert, fifty kilometres from the Libyan border and three hundred kilometres south of the Mediterranean coast. Their language, Siwi, is classified within the eastern Berber group and has roughly thirty thousand speakers.
The community is conventionally organised around eleven clans, traditionally divided into Westerners (Aghurmiyin) and Easterners (Sharqiyin) — a division historically associated with the two original sections of the medieval town. Customary law is codified in a collection of clan agreements (the Manshur) recorded in the early nineteenth century.
The oasis was the seat of the Oracle of Amun, consulted in 331 BCE by Alexander the Great, who is said to have been confirmed there as the son of the god. The ruined Oracle temple at Aghurmi remains, alongside the salt-and-mud kershef architecture of the old town of Shali, abandoned after heavy rains in 1926 made much of it uninhabitable.
Material culture — silver jewellery, embroidery, bridal dress — has been the subject of sustained ethnographic attention. Tourism, dates, and olives are the contemporary economy; intermarriage with Egyptian Arabic-speaking populations and the dominance of Arabic in school and media place the Siwi language under steady pressure.