Siwa (Western Desert)

siwa (Western Desert), oasis about 190 miles (300 km) from Marsa Matruh, to the west of Alexandria, the most westerly of the Egyptian oases and the most easterly point at which people still speak a Berber dialect. C. Belgrave states that at Balad al-Rumi, near Khamisah, he saw Christian ruins with a Coptic cross engraved on a stone, perhaps the remains of a monastery (p. 88).