At home the wealthier women wear coloured silks and richer clothes. They wear their straight black hair thickly oiled and dressed in a complicated coiffure. A fringe of short curls hangs above the eyes, and a number of plaited braids are worn on each side of the face, like the fringe of a mop. Strips of scarlet leather are twisted into the tresses, which must always be of an uneven number, and on the ends of the leather are hung silver bells, rings and amulets. One of the first travellers to Siwa remarked on the strength of an ear that could bear such heavy silver ear-rings, but instead of hanging from the actual ear the rings are fastened to a leather band across the top of the head. All the material for women’s clothes is made by one family of Egyptian merchants at Kerdassa, near the Pyramids. One brother has a shop in Siwa, and the others live in Egypt. Owing to this the price of clothing is very great, yet none of the Siwan merchants have ever considered setting up an opposition trade. Women of the upper classes rarely appear in public during the day, except at funerals, when hundreds of them squat round the house, like a crowd of grey crows, howling and shrieking. When one rides past they hop up from the ground and run a few steps, with long grey shawls trailing behind them on the ground, and then they squat down again, like vultures scared off a carcase. They never work in the fields or drive the flocks to pasturage like the Arab women, or the fellahin, but occupy themselves in making baskets, or pottery, and in household duties. When one woman calls on another she wears all the clothes she possesses, and gradually discards them in order to impress the people she is visiting with her wealth. When I met a woman in the streets she would scuttle into the nearest doorway, or if there was not one handy she would pull a shawl over her face and flatten herself against a wall; even hideous old harridans affected an ecstasy of shyness on seeing an Englishman. Hardly any of the women can speak Arabic, and it is owing to their strange secretive lives that the Siwans have retained their language and are so unprogressive to-day. They resolutely oppose all innovations, refusing even the help and advice of the Egyptian Government doctor. It is to their influence as mothers that the women owe what power they have, because Siwan men care very little for their wives. Most men keep one wife only at a time, but they often marry as many as twenty or thirty, if they can afford to, divorcing each one when she ceases to please.