THE LAND AND ITS PEOPLE

Egypt is one of the oldest countries in the world. It has at least
5,000 years of recorded history, and many Egyptians claim for it
even more. Egypt is centrally located in relation to other concentrated
population centers in Europe, Asia, and Africa. For most of its recorded
past, at present, and probably well into the future we may view Egypt as
being set in the middle of commercial, migration, and invasion routes
that matter to Egyptians and foreigners.
Depending on how you look at the map, you can say that Egypt
occupies the northeast corner of Africa or the land between the Red
Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. It takes up a 30th of Africa’s total land
area and is 665 miles long (1,073 km) from north to south and 720
miles wide (1,226 km) from east to west. Its existence is bound up with
the River Nile; without the river, almost all the land would be desert,
and only a few people would live there. Because of the Nile, Egypt is a
vibrant country with 80 million inhabitants. In the words of the ancient
Greek historian Herodotus, “Egypt is the gift of the Nile

Geography
The country can be divided into fi ve regions: the Nile River Valley,
the Nile Delta, the Western Desert, the Eastern Desert, and the Sinai
Peninsula. Let us look at each in turn.
The Nile River Valley
The river Nile enters Egypt from Sudan, to the south, but its headwaters
lie in the lakes of Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, and Tanzania and
in the Ethiopian Highlands. It is the longest river in the world and it
drains about one-tenth of the African continent, yet its volume of fresh
water is far less than that of the Amazon or the Mississippi. It has long
eased the transport of people and goods in Egypt and parts of Sudan,

but no boat has ever gone the whole distance from any of its sources
to its current mouths at Rosetta and Damietta. For the ancients, Egypt
included only the lands along the last 500 miles of the Nile, from the
First Cataract (narrow rapids) at Aswan to the Mediterranean. The
upper Nile Valley is relatively narrow and fl at-fl oored; it widens after
the bend at Qena, reaching a width of 11 miles (18 km) at Cairo. After
that point the river fans out, forming the Nile Delta as it reaches the
Mediterranean Sea.
In Upper Egypt, the Nile Valley is never more than six miles across.
The area where crops were grown traditionally formed a narrow band
of green hugging the river shores and contrasting with the desert waste-land beyond, a no-man’s-land to the valley farmers. The Nile Valley
itself was for centuries distinguished—and made habitable—by the
annual Nile fl ood, which carries water and rich silt from the Ethiopian
Highlands. Moisture-laden trade winds blow into Africa from the south
Atlantic and meet dry winds from the north, producing heavy spring
rains that swell the Sobat, Blue Nile, and Atbara Rivers in Ethiopia and
cause the fl ood. Before the Aswan High Dam was built in the 1960s,
dwellers in the valley would see the Nile starting to rise between mid-
May and early July, with the peak fl ood in September. Agricultural land
was inundated, not only in the valley and Delta but also in the Fayyum
Oasis connected to the Nile. The receding waters left behind a layer of
sedimentary mud that fertilized the next year’s crops.
To take advantage of this benefi cence, the Egyptian people learned how
to build dams, weirs, embankments, and basins, channeling and storing
the river waters to facilitate raising their crops. The river fl ood occurred
annually, with slight variations in the dates of its rising and falling, but
the amount of water could differ greatly from one year to the next. Too
much water could sweep away houses, food stores, animals, and people;
too little might leave the land hard and cracked, unable to support crops.
Other Middle Eastern rivers fl ood in springtime, damaging crops and
settlements; only the Nile rises at a time when it would otherwise be too

hot for agriculture. In ancient times, the Egyptians thought that their king
controlled these variations in the annual Nile fl ood. Only in the last two
centuries have people come to understand how and why the fl ood occurs
when it does.
The Nile Delta
The Nile Delta lies along Egypt’s northern coast, where the river empties
into the Mediterranean Sea. This region includes more than half
of contemporary Egypt’s farmland. A widening fl at area, totaling some
8,500 square miles (22 thousand sq. km), it has been built up over
time as the Nile deposited sediment near the river’s mouth. The Delta
is mostly level, though it contains low mounds, or tells, that mark the
sites of ancient settlements. One of the most intensely cultivated areas
in the world, it is dotted by thousands of agricultural villages as well as
cities such as Alexandria at its northwest corner and Mahalla and Tanta
in its center. Population density is as high as 4,000 people per square
mile (1,545 per sq. km).
The Nile Valley and Delta regions are home to nearly all of Egypt’s
population. Both ancient and modern Egyptians have differentiated
between dwellers in the Nile Valley south of Cairo (Upper Egypt), or

“Saidis,” and those living in the Delta north of Cairo, or “Bahrawis.”
Depictions of Egypt’s ancient kings contain symbols indicating a double
kingship, as ancient Egypt was thought to represent the unifi cation of
the valley and Delta.
The Western Desert
The Western Desert constitutes more than two-thirds of Egypt’s total
land area, but is home to a tiny percent of the population; the population
density of Egypt’s deserts is about 1 person per 2.5 square miles (6
sq. km). The Western Desert is an extension of the Libyan Desert and
hence the easternmost part of the Sahara. The land is basically a low
plateau, mainly sandstone in the south, some limestone in the north,
and covered by the Great Sand Sea in its western half. Some underground
strata contain large quantities of water that have not yet been
fully exploited. Five oases lie in depressions watered by springs: Siwa,
Bahriya, Farafra, Dakhla, and Kharga. The northwest contains the very
low-lying, uninhabited Qattara Depression. The sandy white beaches
and coastal towns along the Mediterranean were developed during the
1990s as an area of resorts and vacation homes. Some oil and natural
gas deposits have been discovered and are being exploited, as exploration
in the Western Desert continues.

The Eastern Desert
The Eastern Desert does not resemble its western counterpart. It consists
mainly of elevated and mostly rugged mountains paralleling the
Red Sea coast. The western and northern hills contain a lower, limestone
plateau. The loftiest of the southern mountains is more than
7,000 feet (2,000 m) above sea level. Some of the mountains near the
Red Sea contain mineral deposits that are not commercially exploitable.
The Red Sea coastal beaches are being developed as a resort area for
swimmers, scuba divers, and seashell collectors.
The Sinai Peninsula
Many people think of the triangular Sinai Peninsula as belonging more
to Asia than to Africa, but its mountainous south is closely related to
the Red Sea hills, from which it was separated by the geological faults
that form the Gulf of Suez and have provided Egypt’s largest petroleum
deposits. Southern Sinai is especially renowned for Jabal Katarina
(Mount Saint Catherine, the site of the famous Greek Orthodox
monastery of that name) and Jabal Musa, popularly called Mount

Sinai. (However, scholars differ on just where Moses received the Ten
Commandments.) Sinai has developed rapidly since Israel returned it
to Egypt between 1975 and 1982. It is now a center for oil production,
mineral mining, and international tourism. The northern Sinai is a
limestone plateau, relatively fl at, and extremely accessible to invading
armies and migrating peoples throughout history. The Isthmus of Suez
was pierced in 1869 by the Suez Canal, a major maritime waterway
connecting Europe with Asia and East Africa and also a barrier to
migrating Bedouin.
Climate
Egypt is a hot, dry country. Summer temperatures go up as high as
104°F (40°C), and seldom do winter temperatures drop to freezing
(32°F, 0°C). In Cairo, the average temperature ranges from 57°F (14°C)
in January to 85°F (29°C) in July. The temperature range in Alexandria
is 57°F (14°C) in January and 80°F (26°C) in August. Upper Egypt
and the deserts have hotter days and colder nights throughout theyear. A prevailing north wind has a cooling effect on the country, but
in spring the infamous khamsin winds may blow from the southwest,
spewing sand, dust, and hot air through the Nile Valley and Delta,
making people and animals miserable until the winds subside. Only
a thin band of land along the Mediterranean coast can count on rainfall,
averaging about four inches per year. Frosts are rare and snow
is unknown. Egyptians and foreign residents traditionally praise the
Egyptian climate as healthful. However, air and water quality have both
deteriorated in recent years owing to the increased crowding of the
population, especially in the cities. These trends have been exacerbated
by industrialization, the spread of motor vehicles, and climatic changes
caused by the Aswan High Dam, completed in 1970