The town-crier is a venerable, white-bearded individual whose family have held the post for many generations. It is his duty to announce any new regulations in the town, and to summon the populace to meetings or to work. When an announcement has been proclaimed on three consecutive days it is considered that everybody knows it, and if after this an order is infringed the excuse of ignorance is not entertained. The town-crier is a very necessary institution in a place where scarcely anybody can read, and public notices are therefore useless; his voice rivals the muezzin’s, and his drum corresponds to the bell of the old style English bellman. Funerals in Siwa are simple affairs. They generally take place in the early afternoon and are attended by almost everybody in the town. When a death occurs the women in the house raise the deathwail, which is taken up in piercing accents by the women in the other houses near, and then by the whole neighbourhood. It sounds appalling, especially when it starts suddenly in the night. The body is carried on a rough bier of olive wood, followed by a long procession, the relatives, the sheikhs and notables, usually riding on donkeys with umbrellas to shade them from the sun, and a nondescript crowd of women and men. As the procession passes through the streets the men chant a solemn dirge and the women swing their veils in the air, throwing dust on their heads, and every now and then joining in with shrill cries and wailings. On arrival at the cemetery the women sit down some distance apart, and the men proceed to the grave, reciting verses from the Koran. At twilight the women collect again before the door of the deceased’s house and continue the wailing, and afterwards the friends of the family are entertained at a funeral feast where they eat and praise the virtues of the dead person. [Illustration: THE TOWN CRIER’S DAUGHTER] There are several cemeteries round the town, some of them belong to the easterners and some to the westerners. Almost all the roads into the town cross burying-grounds. Until a few years ago it was the custom to cover the grave with two split palm logs and a thin layer of earth, which usually subsided, leaving nothing but wood on the top. These old graves are still a source of danger, as often when one rides over them, without knowing, the wood gives way. Graves of sheikhs are distinguished by a roughly shaped headstone, and generally a little heap of earthenware braziers, left by the women who come to the cemetery and burn incense. When a particularly religious or important Siwan dies, his family keep a guard over the grave at night for about a fortnight after his death, which they say is necessary to prevent the ghoulish old witches from profaning it by digging up the corpse and stealing the dead man’s hair and finger-nails for their charms.