Egypt
Egypt is mostly desert, yet most Egyptians live along the Nile, in a green ribbon of farmland and the wide delta by the sea. For thousands of years the river's yearly flood fed the country, until the Aswan High Dam, finished in 1970, tamed it.
“I'd follow the Nile's green ribbon all the way south.”
- Found in 1799, the Rosetta Stone carries one decree in three scripts; it helped Jean-François Champollion read hieroglyphs in 1822.
- The Suez Canal opened in 1869, linking the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, so ships no longer had to sail around Africa.
The land
Egypt covers about 1,010,408 km², but only about 3.5 percent of that land is farmed and lived on all year. The Western Desert alone takes up around two thirds of the country. In the north-west, the Qattara Depression sinks to 133 metres below sea level. In the east, the Sinai Peninsula forms the only land bridge between Africa and Asia, and its Mount Catherine, more than 2,600 metres high, is the highest peak in Egypt. In the far south, the High Dam holds back Lake Nasser, about 479 km long and one of the largest man-made lakes in the world.
Getting around
Egypt's railway, founded in 1854, is the oldest in Africa and the Middle East. The first stretch ran from Alexandria to Kafr el-Zayyat, and in 1856 the line reached Cairo. Most main lines still start at Ramses Station in Cairo. Sleeper trains run every day from Cairo south along the Nile to Luxor and Aswan.
Food
In December 2025 UNESCO added koshary, Egypt's everyday dish, to its list of the world's living heritage. It mixes rice, pasta, black lentils and fried onions, with vinegar, garlic and hot sauce. Breakfast is often ful medames, cooked fava beans with olive oil and cumin. Bread is called eish, an Arabic word for "life".
Learning
Al-Azhar in Cairo grew from a mosque finished in 972, and it is one of the oldest universities in the world.
Fly over Egypt.
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City 4 of 21Cairo
The Great Pyramid of Giza
“The pyramids are older than any story I know, and still taller than my whole street.”
I'd fly once round the tip of the Great Pyramid. Its keepers are The Camel and the Sphinx.
The plane reaches Cairo from Paris. Clear it and the map opens the way to Rome.
