Pioneer in the Desert: Marcelle Prat

In the Fifth episode of our series on Western Female Travelers, we focus on Marcelle Prat’s visit to Siwa.

In 1935, French reporter Marcelle Prat embarked on an extraordinary journey across Egypt and the Libyan desert, recounted in her article “À travers le sable et la jungle.” Her stop in the Siwa Oasis, then known as the “Oasis of Jupiter Ammon,” stands as one of the most vivid and original accounts of local life and the challenges of exploring the Sahara in the 1930s.

After leaving the chaotic Alexandria, Prat ventured into the “salt deserts of Egypt” until she reached Mersa Matruh, described at the time as “the great commercial center of the desert,” where everything operated by barter and trust reigned among the desert men. Accompanied by the English adventurer Hélène Scott, with her shaved head and indomitable spirit, Marcelle braved a sandstorm to reach Siwa by car, following the tracks left by “camel skeletons” to a Bedouin camp, where she observed the essential and Spartan life of the nomads: “Their only laws are the forces of nature. Here a well, there a bit of shade: that’s what governs their existence.”

Arriving in Siwa is described as reaching a “piece of paradise,” a lush oasis with fruit trees and a history stretching back “five centuries before Christ.” But the presence of a white woman arouses suspicion and unease among the Senussi population: “The women, terrified, flee at my approach… A Christian… a Christian… brings misfortune!” Prat is welcomed by a group of curious children, who guide her among the houses of salt and mud, and she observes the “virgins,” girls of seven or eight with thousands of black braids over their eyes, who appear to her as mysterious and fascinating “dolls.”

Marcelle Prat’s journey to Siwa is not just a geographical exploration but also a path of personal transformation: “Everything in me has already changed; I look, walk, and listen differently, because I have understood that my only defense is my five senses.” Far from the “false certainties of civilization,” Prat faces the essential needs of life, thirst, hunger, the search for shelter and the hostility and curiosity of a world that had rarely welcomed a European woman.

To read the full article, you can follow the link to a post I made years ago: https://www.sxt-jmat.org/single-post/a-travers-le-sable-et-la-jungle-article-by-marcelle-prat

For information on this journalist active between the two wars see: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcelle_de_Jouvenel

Final curiosity: In the third episode of the series dedicated to Captain Hillier’s wife, I was not able to find the lady’s name, but now we have a possible candidate:

 the English adventurer Hélène Scott, who accompanies Marcelle Prat to Siwa. Scott shows that she knows the route to Siwa very well and drives her own car. Furthermore, Prat describes her as having short-cropped hair. It should also be noted that in 1935 the Hilliers were still active, as confirmed by other tourists, this time only men, who traveled to Siwa with them during the same years.

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