Egypt
The gift of the Nile and a bridge between Africa and Asia
Egypt is one of the oldest continuously inhabited places on Earth, a country whose entire civilization has clung for millennia to the thread of the Nile as it cuts north through the desert to the Mediterranean. Geographically it straddles two continents, with the Sinai Peninsula reaching into Asia, and it controls the Suez Canal, one of the planet's most strategic waterways. Home to more than 110 million people, almost all of them packed into the Nile valley and delta, Egypt is the most populous country in the Arab world and a cultural and political anchor of the Middle East and North Africa.
The Nile defines everything. Flowing out of the highlands of East Africa, it spreads into a broad green delta before reaching the sea, and the river's banks form a ribbon of intense cultivation hemmed by the arid Western Desert, the rugged Eastern Desert, and the mountainous Sinai. Beyond the river the land is overwhelmingly desert, and the country's highest point, Mount Catherine in Sinai, rises to about 2,629 meters. The Aswan High Dam tamed the river's ancient floods and generates power, while tourism, Suez Canal tolls, remittances, and natural gas from offshore fields drive a large but strained economy.
Pharaonic Egypt left the pyramids of Giza, the temples of Luxor and Karnak, and a written record stretching back more than five thousand years. Conquered in turn by Persians, Greeks, Romans, and Arabs, Egypt became a center of the Islamic world, and Cairo's Al-Azhar remains a leading seat of Sunni learning. Modern Egypt emerged from Ottoman and British control, asserted itself under Gamal Abdel Nasser, and fought repeated wars with Israel before signing the 1979 peace treaty. Today Cairo's sprawl, the Coptic Christian minority, and a deep literary and cinematic tradition all mark Egypt as a civilizational crossroads.