There are no snake charmers in Siwa, and I have seen none anywhere on the Western Desert. In Egypt one meets many, the most famous perhaps is a man at Luxor. I saw him perform a few days before I left Egypt, and I was most impressed by his exhibition. One evening, without any warning, I took him out with me to a place near Karnak, having first examined him and satisfied myself that he had no snakes hidden about his clothes. In about a quarter of an hour he discovered seven or eight snakes. He used no whistle, but walked about in a very small area muttering to himself, stopping dead every now and then in front of a stone or a bush, thrusting his hand into it and withdrawing it clasping a writhing lively snake. Several of the snakes were known to me as being venomous. He took two of these, one by one, held them to his wrist, and let them bite him so that when he pulled them off his flesh they left blood on his hand. Anybody else would have suffered severely, and would probably have died, but the snake charmer was immune. His father and his grandfather had practised the same trade before him, and according to him they had neither of them suffered in any way by their profession. CHAPTER VI CUSTOMS AND SUPERSTITIONS “. . . Tell the laughing world Of what these wonder-working charms are made. . . . Fern root cut small, and tied with many a knot, Old teeth extracted from a white man’s skull. A lizard’s skeleton, a serpent’s head: . . . O’er these the leach Mutters strange jargons and wild circles forms.” “Custom is King, nay tyrant, in primitive society.” AFTER being some time at Siwa one cannot help noticing how very much the life of the people is influenced by their belief in superstitions and magic arts. To every ordinary accident or natural phenomenon they seem to attach a supernatural explanation, and they constantly carry out little rites, which have no apparent purpose, whose origin and reason they do not know, but which they explain has been the custom “min zamaan.” To believe, as they do, without knowing, is the grossest form of superstition. They have a number of purely local customs and practices which are entirely different to those which are prevalent in Egypt, or among the Arabs of the Western Desert. The Siwans are Mohammedans, and strictly religious in most of their observances, but in some of their habits one can trace a faint resemblance to rites that have survived from former times, long before the people adopted their present religion. But most of the apparently meaningless practices are founded on the inherent fear of evil spirits, which are implicitly believed in by all the inhabitants.