Egypt

Egypt's recorded history begins around 3100 BC with the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, and its pharaonic civilisation lasted, in recognisable form, for roughly three thousand years — the Old Kingdom pyramid builders, the Middle Kingdom, the empire of the New Kingdom under Thutmose, Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, Tutankhamun, and Ramesses, and a long decline through foreign rule by Libyans, Nubians, Assyrians, and Persians.

Alexander the Great took Egypt in 332 BC, and the Greek Ptolemaic dynasty ruled from Alexandria until Cleopatra's death and the Roman annexation of 30 BC. Egypt became an early heartland of Christianity — the Coptic Church dates its foundation to St Mark — before the Arab conquest of 641 brought Islam and Arabic.

Under a succession of Islamic dynasties, then the Ottomans, Egypt was often semi-independent. Muhammad Ali built a modern state in the nineteenth century; the Suez Canal opened in 1869; and Britain occupied the country from 1882. A 1952 army coup ended the monarchy and brought Gamal Abdel Nasser to power. Since then Egypt has been led by former military officers — Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak, and, after the 2011 revolution and a brief elected Islamist government, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Egypt is an Arab and predominantly Sunni Muslim country, with a significant Coptic Christian minority — one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. Islam structures the week and the year, and Ramadan transforms daily life, with fasting by day and a festive, sociable rhythm after sunset.

Egyptian culture carries outsized weight in the Arab world: Cairo's film studios, singers such as Umm Kulthum, and its writers, including the Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, shaped modern Arab culture, and Egyptian Arabic is understood from Morocco to Iraq. Humour, hospitality, and a fatalistic patience ("ma'alesh" — never mind) are common self-descriptions.

Family is the core social unit, hospitality to guests is a strong obligation, and respect for elders and religious observance are expected. Away from the beach resorts, modest dress is appreciated, more so for women and in rural and religious areas.

About 120 million people — some 99 percent of the population — live on the roughly 5 percent of Egypt's land that the Nile and its delta make habitable, one of the highest concentrations of people anywhere. Greater Cairo, with over 22 million residents, is the largest urban area in Africa and the Arab world, a sprawl of history, traffic, and unfinished brick apartment blocks, with a purpose-built new capital rising in the desert 45 kilometres to its east, which became the seat of government in 2024.

The economy leans on the Suez Canal, tourism, remittances from Egyptians working in the Gulf, natural gas, and agriculture, and has been squeezed by currency crises, debt, and inflation. Canal income has been hit hard by the Red Sea crisis: as shipping lines rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope, traffic through the Suez fell by about 42 percent year on year, and annual canal revenue dropped from about 9.4 billion US dollars in 2022-23 to about 7.2 billion in 2023-24. Subsidised bread ("aish," which also means "life") remains politically sacrosanct.

Daily life runs on crowded microbuses and the Cairo metro, the ahwa (coffee house) for men, street food and juice stalls, and a working day that starts early and stretches late into the cooler evening.

Egyptian food is Mediterranean and Levantine, built on bread, pulses, and vegetables. Ful medames (slow-cooked fava beans) and ta'meya (the Egyptian falafel, made with fava rather than chickpea) are the breakfast staples. Koshari — a bowl of rice, macaroni, lentils, chickpeas, fried onions, and a spiced tomato sauce — is the great cheap street meal and the national dish.

Molokhia, a green soup of jute leaves, mahshi (stuffed vegetables and vine leaves), grilled kofta and kebab, roast pigeon (hamam), and fatta (rice, bread, and meat in a garlicky broth) fill out the table. Feseekh, fermented mullet, is eaten at the spring festival of Sham el-Nessim.

Sweets are syrup-heavy: basbousa, konafa, om ali bread pudding, and dates. Tea, often heavily sugared, and thick cardamom coffee are constant; karkadeh (hibiscus), sugarcane juice, and sahlab in winter are the other favourites.

Giza, on Cairo's edge, holds the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the only one of the ancient Seven Wonders still largely intact, beside the pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure and the Sphinx, with the Grand Egyptian Museum, opened in November 2025 a couple of kilometres away, holding the complete Tutankhamun collection. Cairo itself adds Islamic monuments by the hundred, the Coptic churches of Old Cairo, the Khan el-Khalili bazaar, and the citadel.

Upper Egypt is the concentration of pharaonic wonders. Luxor, ancient Thebes, has the temples of Karnak and Luxor on the east bank and, across the river, the Valley of the Kings, the mortuary temples, and the Colossi of Memnon. A Nile cruise south links the temples of Edfu and Kom Ombo to Aswan, its granite quarries, and the relocated temples of Philae and, further on, the colossal rock-cut facade of Abu Simbel.

Away from the river, Alexandria has its Greco-Roman remains and Mediterranean faded glamour; the Western Desert oases of Siwa, Bahariya, and the sculpted White Desert offer a very different landscape; St Catherine's Monastery sits beneath Mount Sinai; and the Red Sea coast at Sharm el-Sheikh, Dahab, and Marsa Alam has some of the world's best coral-reef diving and snorkelling.

Egypt today sits between two conflicts. The Gaza war on its north-eastern border, under a ceasefire since October 2025, has repeatedly interrupted movement at the crossings there, and since 28 February 2026 the United States and Israel have been at war with Iran and its allies. The Red Sea, Egypt's other frontier, has been the harder blow: Houthi attacks on merchant shipping since 2023 pushed hundreds of vessels around the Cape of Good Hope and cut Suez Canal traffic and revenue sharply, and a further crisis began in September 2026 at the Strait of Bab al-Mandab, the southern gateway to the canal, with a declared blockade of certain vessels and oil prices above 100 dollars a barrel. In July 2026 Egypt joined Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan and other states in a multinational maritime alliance formed to keep the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden open. Aviation and tourism across the region have been disrupted. The pyramids, Luxor and the Red Sea resorts are open and Egypt is still working hard to draw visitors, but check flights, crossings and official travel advice close to your departure date.