About Egypt
Egypt is one of the world's oldest continuous civilizations, a desert nation defined and sustained by the Nile River. Located in North Africa with a bridge to Asia via the Sinai Peninsula, it is home to some of humanity's most iconic monuments. For millennia, the annual flooding of the Nile allowed agriculture to flourish in a harsh environment, giving rise to the pharaohs, hieroglyphics, and monumental architecture that still leaves the world in awe.
Cairo, the sprawling capital, is a chaotic and mesmerizing megalopolis where medieval mosques stand alongside modern high-rises. Just outside the city lie the Pyramids of Giza and the Great Sphinx, the only surviving wonders of the ancient world. Further south, Luxor serves as an open-air museum with the Valley of the Kings and the Karnak Temple complex. The Red Sea coast offers a completely different experience, with world-class diving and resorts.
Modern Egypt is the cultural and political heavyweight of the Arab world, influencing music, cinema, and literature across the region. It faces the challenges of modernity while safeguarding an unmatched heritage. From the felucca boats drifting on the Nile to the bustling souks of Islamic Cairo, Egypt offers a journey through time like no other place on Earth.
Modern Egypt formally became a republic on 18 June 1953, only 71 years after gaining nominal independence from Britain and ending a monarchy that traced its origins back to Muhammad Ali Pasha, an Albanian officer who seized power in 1805. The pharaonic script known as hieroglyphics was actively used until at least 394 AD, when the last dated inscription was carved at the Philae Temple, but the language of ancient Egyptian survived spoken through Coptic, still used liturgically today by the Coptic Christian minority which represents about ten per cent of the population. Alexandria, the country's second city, was founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC and briefly hosted the largest library of the ancient world, whose complete destruction between 48 BC and 640 AD is often cited as antiquity's greatest intellectual catastrophe.