Song of Siwa: The Marzuk-Iskander Festival

The Song of Siwa is a fictional epic, the transcribed oral tradition of a band of early Stone Age hunters led by Marzuk who fled southwestern Europe, crossed the Mediterranean Sea to North Africa, and ultimately reached safe haven at Siwa Oasis in the western desert of modern Egypt. The narrative, also known as the Marzuk-Iskander Epic, traces the cultural transformation of Marzuk's clan from prehistoric Iberia to historical contacts with the Te-Henu of North Africa, the Chemi of the Nile Valley, and culminates with the visit of Iskander [Alexander the Great] to Siwa oasis, an event still revered at the oasis today. The Song of Siwa, the epic of Marzuk's clan, has been chanted by a hereditary line of elders for more than two millennia The Marzuk-Islander festival held periodically at Siwa Oasis honors the clan's distant ancestors and celebrates the protective spirit of Alexander the Great. While The Song of Siwa is fiction elements of the epic are based upon historical events.