Egypt

Egypt is a desert country threaded by a single river. The Nile enters from Sudan and runs north through a ribbon of farmland, rarely more than a few kilometres wide, before fanning out into the delta below Cairo. Almost all Egyptians live in that valley and delta. West of the river, the Western Desert holds oases such as Siwa and Kharga; to the east, mountains line the Red Sea coast, and the Sinai Peninsula carries the country into Asia. Away from the northern coast, rain is a rarity.

Upper and Lower Egypt were united around 3100 BC, and for nearly three thousand years pharaohs ruled through priests, scribes and a calendar tied to the Nile flood. After Alexander’s conquest Greek kings ruled from Alexandria, followed by Rome and Byzantium. Arab armies came in the seventh century, and in 969 the Fatimids founded Cairo, where al-Azhar has taught ever since. Egypt gained formal independence in 1922, the monarchy fell in 1952, and the Suez Canal was nationalised in 1956.

Egyptian Arabic, carried across the region by Cairo’s films and songs, is understood far beyond the country. The singer Umm Kulthum and the novelist Naguib Mahfouz, a Nobel laureate in 1988, are touchstones of Arab culture, and the Coptic Church is among the oldest Christian communities anywhere. The economy leans on Suez Canal tolls, tourism, natural gas from offshore fields, cotton and other crops from the delta, and money sent home by Egyptians working in the Gulf.